Playscapes Giveaway: Build-It! Discs for Temporary Playgrounds!

Generally I have some sort of giveaway around the blog's birthday...I'm slow in getting it all together this year (lots of traveling this month) but here it is at last!

Alex Gilliam of Public Workshop creates uniquely engaging opportunities for youth and their communities to shape the design of their cities, in eminently playful ways.  With the support of the National Building Museum, Domaform and Cynthia Field, he developed the Build-It! discs to "challenge possibility on playgrounds, vacant lots, in classrooms and your very own backyard.

Build-It! Discs are fabricated in the United States from double-walled cardboard for extra durability and strength, allowing you to build your very best awe-inspiring structures over and over again. They are made from recycled paper and are 100% recyclable!"

They're amazing just for fun, of course, but Public Workshop also uses them to focus on placemaking:  exploring, for example, how an underutilized public space might be re-envisioned, and using the highly visible nature of a build-it structure to raise public awareness.  They're great for self-building a temporary playscape, or imagining a new permanent playground.

If you are the lucky winner of this giveaway, you'll receive THREE SETS (60 total) of Build-It! Discs, shipping included.   Even to international locations, though they may take a while to arrive.  If you don't win, you can still order your own--they're $35 (plus shipping) for a set of 20, 12 inch diameter discs--by emailing Alex directly. 

TO ENTER, just leave a comment!   You can say something nice about playscapes (the blog is powered by good wishes), or make a suggestion for something you'd like to see here or in the playground world in general, or tell me about your favorite playscape ever.

THE WINNER WILL BE RANDOMLY SELECTED FROM COMMENTS (one per userid, please) AT 2400 CST ON MONDAY APRIL 16.

Hope you win!

Handcrafted Playgrounds by Paul Friedberg now available through Playscapes!

Also in the spirit of encouraging you to make your own playscapes, I'm pleased to announce the second title in my effort to make vintage playground classics available again...Paul Friedberg's Handcrafted Playgrounds from 1975.  Its best description is contained in the book's own foreward:

"Handcrafted Playgrounds is a sketchbook of designs based on two very simple premises: anyone can build a playground, and the actual process of building it can be as important as the finished product. 

It gives the builders (who should certainly include the children for whom it is planned) a chance to shape their environment, to create something to answer their specific needs. 

All settings, urban, suburban, and rural, are rich in natural and man-made materials suitable for play.  Every child, wherever he or she lives and whatever space is available, can have an exciting playground. All it takes is a little imagination."

Paul (see an online bio at the Cultural Landscape Foundation) is best known in playgrounds for his innovative 1970s installations in New York City, in which he utilized what were then completely new forms for play:   massive timber constructs, concrete forts that resembled ancient pyramids, and vest-pocket play spaces in trash-strewn vacant lots before temporary parklets were cool.    (See a 2007 article by Deborah Bishop in dwell magazine for photos of Friedberg's 1970s work, from which the three photos below are taken.)  UPDATE:  Paul has let me know that the last two images are actually the work of Richard Dattner...apologies for the misidentification, but don't worry,  Dattner's own book Design for Play will be released on Playscapes soon!

Friedberg was one of first to realize the ideas embodied in the new word 'playscape' as discrete from 'playground':  a fully three-dimensional landscape space in which purpose-designed components worked together to provide an integrated play experience.

This book reflects that, offering build-it-yourself plans for everything from bridges to benches, spring toys to sprinklers, that can be put together to create a comprehensive play area.   Most are  made from timber, some from tires or other recycled materials like spools and water tanks. 


Handcrafted Playgrounds is currently selling for over $100 on amazon, but now you can get a digital copy through playscapes for just $6!

Please remember that this book is still under copyright protection.  Once you've downloaded the file it is yours, just like a physical book is, to print or loan if you wish but not to copy and hand out.

I've purchased publication rights and must also pay royalties; your respect for the time and expense of the original copyright holder as well as my own is very much appreciated. (If you need to convert the pdf to other ebook formats like epub or mobi, try Calibre, which is a free download).

Purchase Handcrafted Playgrounds digital download for $6 USD via Paypal

DIY Playground #2: 'PlayHive' Playhouse by thoughtbarn

Austin, Texas based design studio thoughtbarn constructed an artful playhouse based on a beehive for a wildfire benefit in their city.  Their unique construction, which children can not only play in but also climb around on both inside and out, requires only 2x4s, a drill and a chopsaw (and some patience, but don't all good things?)  And now full plans are available for download to Playscapes readers!

Licensed once again by a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution, so do please give credit and don't attempt to make money off this, amazing as it is.  To help you on your way, there are additional photos of construction and installation at the thoughtbarn blog and the thoughtbarn flickr page. 

Once again, all I ask is that you send me pics of your very own Playhives, and leave thank-yous for the great folks at thoughtbarn.  Think of the Playhive combined with the terrain and planting suggestions from space2place....amazing.  Go out and make a playscape!

VIEW/DOWNLOAD PLAYHIVE BY THOUGHTBARN

DIY Playground #1: Terrain and Planting for Play by space2place

If you only have the time or budget to do one thing for play, make a hill.

A simple pile of dirt can become a bike ramp, a fort, a stage, a hiding place, a slide, a launchpad for the imagination.  When I was growing up my amazing mother asked the dump truck drivers working on our street to leave a load of dirt in our yard.  It was hands down the best play feature ever, enjoyed by not just my brothers and sisters and me but everyone in the neighborhood.  There were four swingsets, two slides, and three playhouses on our street too, but the hill was the best. 

Sometimes when I recommend hills, though, people are worried about the technical details of the slopes and I never had those answers, but landscape architect Jeff Cutler of space2place in Vancouver, Canada, whose great playgrounds have featured on the blog before does!

Jeff's work is characterized by innovative shaping of the ground to create unique spaces for play accompanied by carefully chosen plantings that enliven the landscape and are themselves full of fun.  It's a mystery to me why so many traditional playgrounds look like play deserts....scraped flat and raw and utterly barren.  Plants are safe!  Don't make a play desert!

space2place is generously providing Playscapes readers with guidelines and suggestions for both play hills and great playground plantings.  It's our first DIY playground feature in honor of Aldo's birthday and it's free for you to download, print, and share under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license, which just means you must credit the source if you share it and you can't sell it.  

But you can use it to make your own awesome play features all you want!  All I ask is that you send me photos of what you do so I can eventually post a mash-up of reader projects, and that you leave nice thank-yous to space2place in the comments. 

VIEW/DOWNLOAD TERRAIN AND PLANTING FOR PLAY BY SPACE2PLACE 

Watch for DIY play feature #2 on Monday.

Go make a playscape!

Builder Boards by Jack McGee, Playground DIY

The 'Builder Boards' from inventor Jack McGee are like Lincoln Logs for the backyard, and you can purchase them in fully and partially finished states from his website, or get the plans to make your own from his $13 how-to book (added to the sidebar Reading List).  OR construct the vintage models straight from this 1953 Modern Mechanix article. 

Don't miss Jack's other inventive DIY projects on his website, including a magnetic marble run, fun house mirror, and a busy box for special needs children. 

Scrap Stores for the Playground

In researching the previous post, I came across the mention that the 'yellow submarine' had been repainted with paint provided by the Children's Scrap Project in Hackney, London, which collects waste from businesses (including paint) for free, performs a health and safety check, then displays materials in a warehouse for members to use for education and play alike...a boon to the adventure playground or the DIY playscape.

The Children's Scrap Store in Bristol is a similar organization which goes an exciting step further by providing The Scrapstore PlayPod™:  a container full of repurposed materials and equipment (loose parts) for play.  See it in action:



There is also a more detailed video of the playpods here. There are currently 28 schools that have a Scrapstore PlayPod™ in their play ground; it's a fast-growing concept that I'd love to see spread to other countries, especially my own USA.  Of course, here you can pay $7k to $25k (near as I can tell; prices are notably absent from their publicity) for some blue polyethylene foam pieces Designed By David Rockwell and heavily promoted by Kaboom. Make up your own mind. 

There is a nationwide Scrapstores charity in the UK, which maintains a directory of all scrapstores there.    I'm wondering about scrapstores in other countries...I know of a few here in the USA but no comprehensive directory.  So, dear readers, tell me what you know about scrapstores!  Is there one in your area?  Do you use it?   If you know of a scrapstore, add it to the list I've started in the forum.

EnTYREly Fun Playgrounds, James Jolley

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Tires are generally a locally available material in developing countries, and are a key material for structures like those by GoPlay and Basurama.  They're also often a prominent feature in adventure playgrounds, which share a commitment to low-cost and recycled components.  Friend and playground advocate Tim Gill reminded me about the amazing manual for building tire structures by the late James Jolley, which is online in its entirety in memory of its author's commitment to children's environments.

Full instructions for every imaginable form of tire structure as well as some constructs using cable spools and barrels, too!  Delightful.  In my backyard growing up, we had a traditional swingset along with a big dirt hill (my mom asked the workers for a dumptruck of dirt when they were building the road), a barrel, an enormous tractor tire and a cable spool...hours of fun, especially before the trees were tall enough to climb.

In keeping with my line of thought lately about playground rubrics, here is how Jolley divided the types of playground functions provided by his designs:

1. Climbing
2. Swings
3. Sand and water play
4. Dramatic play
5. Landscaping, retaining walls etc.
6. Fantasy
7. Loose or movable constructive
8. Quiet
9. Movement equipment
10. Group
11. Solitary

A tire dragon to Jolley's design by Learning Structures in New Hampshire