Designing for Play

Barbara E. Hendricks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351945042
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Architects, landscape designers, builders, gardeners and teachers have all at some time been called upon to design a play area. Unfortunately, this diversity has not resulted in a similar diversity of design solutions for this very problematic task. Despite a proliferation of 'how to' books on this subject, playgrounds have remained virtually the same throughout the world since their creation over a century ago. This is not a 'how to' design book. Instead, based on thirty years' experience as a specialist play area designer, Barbara Hendricks details a radically new approach, applying cutting-edge thinking from child development and child psychology to find innovative design solutions, challenging the established notions of play provision. Covering key sociological, public policy, environmental and design issues, this book provides designers with an exploration of and guide to, designing from a 'child's eye' view of the world. Beautifully crafted and copiously illustrated with numerous examples of recently designed playgrounds, this book is not only stimulating and informative, but fun to read and seriously playful in itself. This second edition brings the text up to date from 2001 to 2010 with added discussion about new ideas for play area designs and what has not worked in the past decade.

Chapter 1
Designing for Play

Designing for play has been the rightful field of work for anyone who wishes to set themselves up as a playground designer. There is neither clearly identified body of knowledge required nor any particular design skills. Architects, landscape architects, sculptors, engineers, technicians, builders, gardeners, sportsmen, educators and former children all have tried their hand at playground design. The multitude of angles from which we approach playground design could be seen to bring in a wonderful diversity to this field. Unfortunately that is not so. Public playgrounds have been part of western cities for a little over 100 years now and yet as we enter into the twenty first century there is no other aspect of public provision that has changed so little over the past century and is so boringly the same around the world as public playgrounds.

Why is this so?

Is this because there is so little professional competence in the design of play areas?

Is it because designing for children has little or no prestige in society?

Is it because societies do not prioritise good quality space design for children as a public service?

Is it because children have no political power?

Is it because the adults are too busy taking care of their own needs?

The list of questions could continue – there is no simple answer to the problems in public playgrounds design. The solution lies in the will of society to want to offer children a quality childhood, where children are recognised as citizens and not extensions of their parents. To date there are few role models to follow when trying to establish new levels of service for children. We need to look to the basic characters of play and of childhood. Yet if there is no agreed upon body of knowledge – where do we start?

How do we know something?

We recognise as right or accurate pieces of information that seem to make sense to us. When we are new to a subject and learning about it for the first time we tend to accept without question the first pieces of information we are told about that subject. After that all further incoming information is filtered through the first set of knowledge we have.

When we are learning about children's play out of doors, a subject where there are a multitude of meanings and theories, we need to consider carefully those first pieces of information we have accepted and identify our biases; otherwise we are in danger of discarding salient knowledge about children and children's play in favour of that information we first received.

Some excellent articles and books have been written on designing for children's play – and there have been many nostalgic and romanticising publications as well. The design profession have been busy contributors – mostly landscape architects or architects, however the majority of reference books have been written by pedagogues and early childhood experts.

Many of the playground design books now published are a type of do-it-yourself playground design guide. Playground design has been seen to be a distant cousin of garden design at the amateur, home-gardener level. Anyone can do it, if they just follow a few technical tips and guidelines. This book takes playground design seriously – like play itself. It is a book aimed at bringing the issue of designing for play up to a professional level – a subject for designers about design.

Looking through the literature on designing play areas I have renewed my acquaintance with Arvid Bengsston's Environmental Planning for Children's Play. I have enjoyed the text and photographs every time I read the book and I have found that at different stages in my professional development I would find more material for thought and inspiration. This last time with the book I was struck with the sections dealing with the problems facing children living in cities – it sounded so immediate, as if he was writing about the situation today. Actually it was 1970 when he wrote it.

What has happened in these intervening years? Little has changed to alter conditions in public spaces in cities in favour of use by children. In fact, Bengsston starts the book by referring to a 1958 European seminar on the problem of playgrounds. Fifty years later the list of problems is almost the same and just as long. Is there a real intent on the part of society to provide well for children's use of public spaces? There seems to still be a great gap between people like Arvid Bengsston and other advocates of children's welfare and right to play and those professionals who are responsible for the form and content of the everyday public spaces used by children. Often the technical literature intended to inform these professionals only seems to widen the distance because each new text increases the height of the mountain of opinion and ideas we are trying to get an overview of.

I hope this book will help give perspective over the mountain – and give designers an overview of the current ideas and knowledge about children's interaction with their environment and about play as a cultural activity.

The century of the child: Children as VICs

The twentieth century was early on called the century of the child and the United Nations has celebrated the International Year of the Child and made a declaration of the Rights of the Child. Yet have conditions for children improved over this century?

In the western world children today have better access to medical care, protection by law from physical punishment and many children have bedrooms filled with mountains of toys – paradise on earth for children, you might think. Children are celebrated in the market economies as Very Important Consumers – they have a great influence on how the family income is used. But do children really have it better? Why then are there so many children with symptoms of stress and related problems?

Children today in most western societies have rights as individuals established and protected by law, although they are not permitted to vote for their governments. In this book I will address one aspect of western society that seems to be going in the opposite direction relating to children's rights, the children's right and freedom to use outdoor public spaces and the opportunities children have to come to explore in their own terms about living on Planet Earth.

The Right to Explore Planet Earth

This planet has rhythms of day and night, the sun moving across the sky, the moon's phases, the stars, and the rise and fall of the tides, the seasons as well as local geography and living things. All these items are part of our human heritage. Yet modern urban children are kept apart from the planet and its forces – we need to make a Charter with our children and give them the freedom of this earth.

In many traditional societies and developing countries children have better conditions relative to access to outdoors and exploring the world around them than do children in many modern western cities. Not that children in developing countries have access to designed playgrounds – they do not; but they have the freedom to explore the outdoor environment around them and come to know about it in their own terms and make it their own. Children in modern western cities are not so free – they are very restricted by traffic and fears of violence. Their movement is often so restricted throughout their childhood that they become adults with little or no understanding of how their city is organised. They are taken to public playgrounds and supervised while at play and then escorted back into the adult private sphere of the home. They have no sense of the lay of the land around them and may even have a fear of animals, birds and nature. Many city children do not ever see the stars in the sky and have no idea how to determine north from south – they are cut off from the planet and its rhythms. This situation has given rise to a modern childhood health problem – the "Nature Deficit syndrome"

I am not suggesting that all is negative in western cities for children – cities are grand places to live. They are the epitome of our culture and civilisation. They are treasure houses of ideas, architecture, art, music and spiritual developments. The problem is that children are not permitted to use much of the city as children or to get the most out of city living. Children are not content to just be driven past and Children really are not so dangerous. It is the perceived dangers in the outside world this gate is to protect them from.

One mother of a five-year-old boy tells the story how one night in the winter when she put hill) to bed the full moon was shining into his bedroom window. After kissing him good night and turning off the light she left the room. A short time later a little voice called to her "Mommy you forgot to shut off the moonlight."

look at the city, they want to touch to feel, to interact with things; and the way in which we now organise city living and childhood access to public spaces severely limits the child's possibility for exploring city on their own terms. They should not need to be bussed out to the forest to be able to play freely in the outdoor environment. In the twenty first century, if we adults act wisely on behalf of all our citizens, children in cities can enjoy the best of city living and those cities that take good care of the children will be seen to be the best cities for all to live in.

Play environment design requires reasonable competence in both the natural sciences of the environment and the social science of childhood, as well as design. Theories of play area design all too often are based in adult mythology and clichés – not in knowledge. It seems the more available knowledge about natural sciences and about childhood the more we cling to myths and clichés when dealing with design for children. What we need is to develop skills where science and childhood are used to inform the design process.

"Those with little experience have little wisdom" (The I Ching)

Playing means it is possible to take risks that would otherwise be too dangerous. Designing play areas requires a playful approach to designing, to taking risks, to testing the boundaries of trends in design; it means to risk being seen as not serious. Play area design should be executed with humility, recognising that we adults are but tourists in the land of children; we are not experts in their culture and their ways. Childhood experts are experts in an adult definition of childhood – not in life as experienced by children. While we have played as children we lack the experience of contemporary childhood.

Cities are grand places to grow up in – they are the treasure houses of our civilisation.

References

Walker. B.B. (1992), The I Ching or Book of Changes, St. Martin's Griffin: New York.

Chapter 2
People Play

About the role of play in our lives

"Play is a constant happening, a constant act of creation in the mind or in practise" Arvid Bengsston, 1970

The twentieth century has been the first century in this civilisation where children and childhood has been under the microscope. In the nineteenth century the state started to differentiate between children and adults with laws against child labour and requirements for school attendance. Children's and mother's medical care became specialities of experts. During the twentieth century we saw an ever greater expansion of expert professions who specialise in children and childhood, in parenting and child care – psychologists, educators, and educators of early childhood educators, childhood historians, sociologists and anthropologists. Children and childhood are now acceptable as an adult profession but not yet as prestigious as being in the business of automobiles, computers or aeronautics. It is an area of expertise that is often connected to "women's issues" and one where the value to society is not recognised in the pay packets those experts receive. And those professions that are experts on children are also seen to be experts on play and play spaces. This is an expertise arrived at by association – not by a competence in the subject itself. Play area design...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Designing for Play
• 2 People Play
• 3 History of the Play Yard: Not a Design Story
• 4 Design and Aesthetics – In Relationship to Play
• 5 Society's Criteria
• 6 Children's Criteria
• 7 Designer's Criteria
• 8 A Balancing Act: Putting it All Together
• 9 Play Yards with Early Childhood Institutions
• 10 Play Areas at Public Parks – Unsupervised
• 11 Designing for Play at School
• 12 Green Children and other Trends in Playgrounds
• 13 Magic in the Play Area
• 14 Playing with the Future
• Appendix 1: Suggestions for the Layout of Playgrounds
• Appendix 2: Useful Play Organisations and Contacts
• Appendix 3: Safety Guidelines and Standards
• Bibliography
• Index