Grounds for Play

Recall your grade schoool playground. How and what did you play? Did you twirl on bars, practice penny drops? Did you climb on jungle gyms or simply use them as imaginary shelter in fantasy play? Did you make yourself sick on the merry go round?

In Fall Down Go Boom, Good magazine provides an excellent report on the history of playgrounds and how they have been dumbed down to decrease the risks that provide the opportunity to build cognitive functions.

Adjunct articles describe innovations that are afoot in parks like Berkeley's Adventure Playground (pictured) that use scrap materials to promote creative play or Imagination Park planned for Manhattan, that offers colorful oversized blocks and loose parts.

These examples challenge playgrounds to think outside the current out-of-the-box-style of play areas: sterilized, safe and familiar to fast food patrons.

And what about us grown-ups? Play continues to provide a sound antidote to the serious nature of our lives. PSFK recently reported on Bruno Taylor a renegade playground designer and advocate for play. Bruno is on a mission to bring play back into public spaces, evidenced by the installation of swings in London bus stops.


Photos via GOOD & PSKF