another over-programmed playground by architects

[Trace One]

,http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/nyregion/in-a-brooklyn-park-design-movable-parts-at-play.html?ref=nyregion

have we given up on the concept of environmental design? This is what Ian would do:  first, analyze the location by it’s function in the natural world. A child’s play space seems to me to correlate to a glade in a forest. Go from there. This whole  nasty foam things in playgrounds seems gross. Give me, as a child, a lovely bench to climb and appreciate, some great trees some great running paths, and some swings.. What the heck is wrong with swings – who doesn’t love to swing?

And meanwhile, get off my lawn! (feeling grouchy today!)

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

some playgrounds are for children, others are for adults to talk about.

 

……… and this one even inspires you to unwittingly get more adults talking about it. Mission accomplished.

 

I’m with you. traditional playgrounds are very successful to foster imagination and activity for the children.

[Leslie B Wagle]

It’s strange, their firm website says they have a large multidisciplinary team, but it doesn’t even mention landscape architecture or design, and almost all the photos are interior focused.

[Calico]

I think it’s good to see some fresh ideas in the realm of playground design, even if the new ideas are coming from architects and involve foam blocks. Competition can be good. For too long, landscape architects have enjoyed a monopoly in playgrounds, and have squandered it by farming the design out to Kompan, Play Structures, and anybody else who might have bought the principal a round of golf recently. There are some playgrounds out there that look really cool and look like somebody thought about them… but most are the same cheap to buy but expensive to own crap designed by an anonymous draftsman who couldn’t have cared less.

[Roland Beinert]

As much fun as it is to bash architects for over-stepping their bounds, I think the idea of giant foam bricks might have really appealed to me as a kid. I played with legos a lot as a kid, and enjoyed building blanket forts, too. 

[Leslie B Wagle]

We sure don’t have any inside track to design playgrounds around my region; I think when you see the product assembly approach it is in fact most likely put together by the product makers’ draftsmen.

[Trace One]

Yeah, Roland, but  this kind of stuff is for home. Seems like such a dirt and disease attractor, for the public space. I don’t know. Maybe not. I need to go see one. As soon as I win the lottery.  

[Trace One]

While I am softening on this concept, Calico, your interpretation of reality is not the world I live in. LA’s were never squandering away their chance at the design. where in the world did that ever happen?

The story of the stamped out play structure playgrounds  is not one of LA’s being lazy and thoughtless.. Might be a good topic for a thesis, actually – the rise of the wooden play structure and the playground industry..

But lazy, inopportunisitc LA’s ? I don’t think so. 

As for the design itself, I agree, of course, competition is good. I also believe that bad design is bad..

But I will check  back in when I have been out there throwing the blocks around my self for a few hours.

[Mark Di Lucido]

I like the idea of “loose parts” in a playground. It reminds me of movable seating in public spaces. And if children like playing with them is that so bad? And I can’t help thinking if you placed a, ‘glade in a forest’ playground next to the Betsy Head Park and allowed kids to choose, most would go for the Betsy. Yet I realize that many of the kids I see today also play with electronic devices almost to the exclusion of everything else (the severest example of an “over-programmed” activity) so at what point do we intervene and impose what we think is the suitable play “du jour”—the ‘Last Child in the Woods’ kind of thing? My generation’s favorite (and I think most beneficial) childhood play activities were usually thought of on-the-fly, were slightly dangerous, usually involved dirt and unsanitary conditions, and we loved them. They usually took place in a mixture of the natural and built environment, and in them we were truly free, creative, certainly enhanced our motor skills, maybe cognitive skills, but definitely learned about the world. 

[Rob Halpern]

Seems Rockwell (they used to specialize in restaurants) merely created a place to feature this existing model of playground

http://www.imaginationplayground.com/product.html

Plenty of these exist.

I like the idea of kids gathering around something that encourages them to play creatively together.

But the loss is that they could do this inside or in a parking lot. An opportunity to be creative outdoors in Nature was lost

Oh and there was an L.A. involved:

MKW + Associates, LLC is the landscape architect for the project

http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/betsyheadmemorial/pressrelease/21123

Makes you wonder just what Rockwell added

[Calico]

Not necessarily lazy and thoughtless and inopportunistic, although that describes a few LA firms in the greater Denver area that relied heavily on national production builder clients to exist and thought the gravy train would go forever. It’s simply much more profitable for said LA firms to farm the playground design out to somebody else in exchange for specifying their product. I happen to disagree with the approach, which should be evident from my writing… but I totally get why it happens.

[Roland Beinert]

Aren’t all playgrounds dirt and disease attractors? Who sterilizes the chains you hold onto on swings?

[Trace One]

but a tree or a swing is not the same as a piece of Styrofoam. These guys live outside. Styrofoam, or whatever, is this weird inert thing..OK, how do you think they clean these giant  pieces of nanoplastic. Do we know?

[Trace One]

?? I stand by my contention that -farm out the design? I have never seen it happen. The opposite,  dear,IMHO. LA are so f-ing egotistical, so confident and competitive. No, buddy, there is another reason. I challenge you to find some fact to buttress your case – and by that I mean a history time line – I distinctly remember when cedar modular play structures took over our playgrounds, in the eighties..I wonder, also, if liability  law had a part in it..I remember talking to NYC LA  who were saying they could not get a set of swings approved, because of the liability. The rubber-chips playground surface came around about that time also..

Facts! Historical facts! Lets get some..Oh, but I forgot, the ASLA does not think history is important at all!!!

[Trace One]

Also, dear Calico, most spec processes make it very hard, in fact illegal, to make a design that requires the use of one product.

Do I need to say that again? You cannot, especially for government, write specs that require the use of a single manufacturer. and the private contractor should not want to..

As I said, Calico, my world is not yours! You are bizarro world to me.

[Author]

Posts