Patterns of Play - a playground rubric?

The National Institute for Play, a U.S. based non-profit "committed to bringing the unrealized knowledge, practices and benefits of play into public life", provides a useful summary for playground types:  seven elemental behavior forms that it terms "patterns of play".

Attunement play
Body Play & Movement
Object Play
Social Play
Imaginative and pretend play
Storytelling-Narrative play
Transformative-Integrative and Creative play

All of the patterns have short summaries and a list of resources for further reading.

Since beginning this blog I've often puzzled over how to evaluate a playground;  not strictly as 'good' or 'bad', but as effective.  The play is the thing, and the playscape just an enabler...does it provide the space in which all of these play patterns can occur?  Does it facilitate not just presence, but engagement in these forms?  I like the patterns as at least the beginning of some sort of rubric, not because I think the intangible experience of a playground can be captured in a set of numbers but because it's always good to have a way of organizing ones thoughts...this seems a useful guide for discussions about the design of new playgrounds, and new ways of utilizing existing ones.

Natural settings, of course, provide space for all sorts of play without half trying and understanding how they do so is worthy of serious study by those who presume to improve...

I'll be thinking more about this, and hope you will too.

[The lyrical at-play images accompanying this post are by gardener and play observer Paolo Tasini....apologies for taking so long to feature them, Paolo!]