Vintage Chicago Playground Slide, Vivian Maier

From the recently discovered photograph archives of Vivian Maier, a street photographer c. 1950-1990.

See more at John Malloof's blog, and read more at the Kickstarter project to document Vivian Maier's life.

Longtime readers will recognize this as one of the most delightful of the Fun-ful slides.

Mora Park Playground and Green Battle, Urbanarbolismo, Castell de Guadalest, Spain, 2010

First, Spanish firm Urbanarbolismo generated a great inexpensive design for an unusual site with a serious problem of run-off from the surrounding mountains.  To stay within a small budget of 14500 euro, they reused all existing street furniture, streetlights, benches, swings and slides, coordinating them with eye-popping orange paint that is echoed in the splashes of new safety surfacing.  To deal with the water, all of the park slopes converge towards the central zone, where soil awaited planting. And then how to plant the space? 

Wanting to encourage community involvement, Urbanarbolismo staged a "Green Battle" in which about 200 people threw seed-containing mud balls at each other until the battlefield/site (and themselves) were completely covered.  Seeds included a grass to green the space quickly and native species such as thyme and heather to add permanent color and aroma to the playscape.  

Playful installation...playful site!  I'm so going to make my youth group do this next time something needs planting.  Just add water.

 

Urbanarbolismo also has an award-winning strategy for using the 'la batalla verde' events to green-up public spaces, and you can send them a photo of your own tree and they will design a dream treehouse for it!

Playgrounds on Google NGram

So of course I had to do some Ngramming of playground terms as soon as I heard about the new Google feature, which tracks mentions of words in their corpus of scanned media:

The word 'playground' really doesn't exist before 1800, and even then it is frequently used without reference to children (i.e. the Playground of Algiers).  Note that 'playground' spikes in the early twentieth century, when the growth of urban areas generated a great deal of philanthropic activity around provisions for the needy in general and children in particular.  There's a small spike during the mustachioed seventies, and I am pleased to see that interest has been rising since the mid-nineties!

 

'Playscape' doesn't enter the language at all until 1960, spikes in the 1980s as a new way of phrasing playgrounds, and seems to still be rising, though with a bit of a hitch.  The Ngrams are based on google's 2009 holdings.

Most of the combination ngrams (like 'playground' with 'children', 'school, 'safety', etc.) don't work well because there are just so many more mentions of words like 'children'.  But here is a fascinating one:  the combined ngram of 'playground' and 'obesity'. 

Note the point at which mentions of 'obesity' cross-over mentions of 'playground'....it's much earlier than I expected, about 1965.  And it probably reflects mostly adult obesity but still, fascinating.

And one more, 'playground' and 'risk':

No particular correlation between the two, but it shows what playgrounds are up against...a virtually flat definition of risk that expands exponentially not in say, WWII or somesuch serious time, but in the late 1970s.  And look at that line go.

The (awesome) Children's Play Information Service, London

 I'm back in the USA (and recovered from an unpleasant flu, for which I totally blame the arctic temperatures at the V&A Olympia archives where the librarians were sitting under BLANKETS but I had to check my coat in the locker!) so there will be be several follow-up posts from the London playground chat, which turned out to be a lively discussion amongst a diverse group of architect/landscape architects, representatives from playground charities and playground corporations,  independent playground builders and other interested (and interesting!) parties.  Thanks to all of you who attended, and do remember to keep in touch.

After the chat, some of us moved on to the Children's Play Information Service, whose library contained Every. Book. I have ever wanted to read about playgrounds.  Including all those hard to find vintage titles from the heady self-building, mustache-growing 1970s.  It was all I could do not to break out a pillow and settle in for the weekend.  But I will save that for my next visit.

PLUS they provide a monthly newsletter for those in the play sector (subscribe or view archives here), AND a series of helpful factsheets on aspects of play and playsite development,
AND maintain a database of scholarly research into play. 
The 'latest news' section of the website always has interesting links, like this one to a new pdf on play and toys for the blind and partially sighted, by the British Toy and Hobby Association. 

Unfortunately they don't have an online catalog, but they do have Michael, Incredibly Nice Librarian, who is happy to help.  Just email them if you have an enquiry or want to stop by...you may bump into me there!

P.S.  CPIS is in danger of closing due to government cutbacks...they are only funded through the end of February, just in time for me to return and camp out in the stacks.  If they were here I'd say 'write your congressman'!  Can't do that, but using their services to show how valuable they are over the next two months can't hurt.  If you're in the UK, get thee to the library, and the rest of you, sign up for the newsletter.

UPDATE:  if you have a UK postcode you can sign a petition to save the CPIS here!

The Haye Playground, Mortar&Pestle Design, Southwark London, 2010

"After consulting with local residents, together we decided that a traditional play set, swing and slide was a little bit boring and unoriginal and instead built these abstract hills made of concrete and grass, where the children could run, jump and play. Local residents really liked this idea and unofficially called the park 'Teletubby Land'."

"The Haye" as the park is known, is in Southwark, London. The playground was designed and built by Richard Knowles, of Mortar&Pestle Studio, May Safwat and Diego Ulrich and of course the many local residents of the park.

An inspiring (and historically relevant...more on that later) design by a young studio from whom I'd like to see many more playgrounds!

London Playground Chat, Friday December 3

Thanks to playscapes friend Tim Gill, we'll be meeting next Friday from 12 - 2 at the German Gymnasium, Pancras Road, London N1C 4TB.

There is no charge (but also no lunch provided - though there will be teas & coffees). Thanks to Argent for providing the meeting room.   Afterwards, some of us will also be making our way to visit the Children's Play Information Service (the world's largest library on children's play, likely to soon be defunct due to goverment cutbacks) and then later to see the Snug play kit (pictured, a movable parts playground that preceded the recent hoopla over David Rockwell's Imagination Playground-in-a-box) in use at Gillett Square, Hackney.

Numbers are strictly limited so if you haven't already done so, please RSVP...I'd love to see you there!

Kennington Playscape, make-good, Hoxton, London, 2010

 

Make-good of London stepped in when the planning process for a new play area had become contentious.  A series of meetings with the estate's young people, in which they built their ideas out of cardboard at 1:1 scale, resulted in the concept of an activity course in which cubes of various sizes and materials offered "opportunities to hide, jump, ride a bike or scooter, sit, socialise, and role-play".

Ultimately, 21 cubes were constructed:  8 of wood with open interiors to form chairs, chariots, soap boxes and hiding spaces, 8 solid cubes to line up as hurdles (or look at your reflection in the shiny stainless steel) and 5 'smooth and cooling' concrete cubes.  All of the cubes can be used together as seating for an event.

I think it's fascinating that a resident's group that had been unable to come to consensus over 'traditional' designs presented by playground fabricators achieved unity with such a non-conventional plan.  It's a testimony to the power of involving the community with the design process, and of their willingness to be more open to design innovation than we often assume.

The playscape's reception was summed up by a ten-year old resident:  "I think it's magnificent and cool and exciting and it is much more fun than the old park.  We made this one."

Catherine Greig is the founder and director of make:good, and I talked to her about posting her projects back in July yet here it is nearly December, which is just a reminder that if you send me stuff (which is great, keep doing it!) it may take me a month or so to get to your email and another few months for it to work its way onto the blog.  There is a lot of correspondence to keep up with at this point, and also that pesky issue of keeping my real job going.

SO, if you happen to be in London and would rather just chat in person:  I'm traveling over soon, and there will be an informal gathering from noon to two on Friday, December 3rd to talk about new playground ideas.  If you're interested send a quick RSVP (by comment or by direct email, either way) and based on the number of replies a location will be announced shortly.  Hope to see you!

"Shadow Play" by Richter Spielgerate

Germany-based Richter Spielgerate has recently developed "Shadow Play", an interactive playground installation in which children (I think grown-ups would like this, too!)  cast shapes and colors onto the ground plane by rotating panels attached at the top of a pole until their shadows overlap.   

Each pole provides for 360 degree rotation, and the changing arc of the sun would require some really interesting angular adjustments to get the shadows to overlap, which a group could work together to achieve.  What a great learning opportunity!

[found at colourlessdesign]

Treehouse, Drayton Park Primary School, drdh architects, 2005

"The tree was the only natural feature in a hard urban playground, but had been fenced off due to its roots breaking up the tarmac surface and making it dangerous. The preparatory works for the tree house involved breaking up the surface around the tree to allow the roots access to water. This new ground was covered by the open deck of the interior floor of the house which surrounds the trunk. A spiral stair, with a rope handrail climbs up into the branches of the tree, allowing the children the opportunity to look across the playground from within the leaves. At the top of the stairs, provision for a future slide to be fitted was allowed, through a removable panel, once funding allowed."

A lovely solution for a lonely tree, constructed by the BA (Hons) Architecture students of Studio 1 in 2005 at London Metropolitan University  under the leadership of Daniel Rosbottom and David Howarth, principals of drdh architects.  The project was a finalist in the Architects' Journal Small Projects Award 2005.

Full disclosure:  Daniel and David are my architects, my church's architects, and have lately been here in Oklahoma to eat hot dogs, see the buffalo and try to comprehend an OU football game.   But mostly to bring our little congregation an amazing, innovative design for a new building that nestles into our 100 acres of prairie like it knew beforehand the tallgrass and the wind.  There will, of course, be a playground.  I'll keep you posted.

Woodthorpe Grange Playground, Keita Takahashi, Nottingham, UK (proposed)

Were Archigram around today, they might be video game designers, whose speculation in virtual reality can lead to equally interesting real-world structures.  So kudos to Nottingham for giving a playground commission to Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy.  (disclaimer: I'm not myself a gamer but am told on good authority that these are AMAZING.)

He's just released (still speculative) sketches and preliminary designs on his blog, with the goal of creating  "something that anyone can play with, kids, adults, dogs. But the way 3 years old kids would play is very different from 5 years old. Besides that, who to play with is also a big element that changes the way they play. For example, they would play more safely with parents, while they would play more adventurously with other kids."

 

 

I've included mostly Keita's sketches here because they're so appealing, but it is interesting to watch their transformation into more concrete design images on his blog...he frankly acknowledges that many of his initial ideas "may be too dangerous"!

While the focus on this blog is often on the landscape of playgrounds, it's still nice to see fresh thinking about its components. [Thanks, Bryant!]