Designing Playgrounds for Kids Not Child’s Play
Designing a playground for kids requires the same considerations as any other architectural structure – a fact often overlooked by individuals dreaming up playground ideas. Let’s explore a few factors which makes designing school playgrounds for kids unique, challenging and highly rewarding.
Space
Just like residential or commercial lots, every playground occupies a predetermined space. The space often limits or caters to specific playground components. One of my favorite playground components is the Tarzan maze. This playground components provides children several swinging options which creates a new play experience each time and encourages repetitive use. For all of its benefits, the Tarzan maze takes up a large chunk of playground real estate. Not only is the structure 8′ × 8′, but it requires a larger boundary area to accommodate for swinging children.
Open space offers an array of options for playground design. At School Daz, Inc. we value open space for its physical fitness traits. Just as musicians use silence to flow between notes or artists use white space to draw the eye to certain parts of a painting, open space gives the playground fluidity and directs students to different playground components within the structure. By elongating the distance between elements, children are required to travel further to reach the next component. For children, that means running from place to place. This running from component to component builds cardiovascular endurance.
Maximizing fun by utilizing the space poses a challenge for any designer, but it also enables designers to be imaginative in how he or she incorporates the landscape, boundaries and open area into the playground design.
Safety
Playgrounds for kids have gotten much safer over the decades. Much of the increased playground safety comes from advances in building materials – no more steel poles embedded in concrete or sliver-giving ladders and swings. Design achieves a higher safety standards in a few ways.
Line of sight hold significant weight in creating a playground design. Supervision on the playground reduces the chances a child will get hurt by roughhousing or by not using the equipment properly. School Daz, Inc. designs playgrounds with multiple vantage points and lines of sight. A trained playground supervisor knows to move throughout the playground area, but increasing the line of sight and opening the space allows supervisors to view several areas at once.
Also, some playground components just aren’t safe. Tube slides or other obstructive components are not recommended because concealment blocks the line of sight. Also, at School Daz, Inc., we don’t generally install swings. This comes as a shock to most people since swings are one of the first things people think about when making a playground. But considering the height a child could fall from, the inability to restrain a child on a swing and the reckless nature in which people use the equipment (remember the underdog?!), swings simply pose too much risk for injury.
Fun
A boring playground offers as much practicality as an ice cream parlor in Antarctica. Playgrounds for kids must be designed with children in mind. Master Designer, Joe Deutsch, spent years teaching physical education to elementary children and has three of his own. Designing with fun in mind sets playground design apart from the analytical part of most architecture. The vivid imagination of children means a platform will be a watchtower today and a fire station tomorrow. Exploring the flexibility of playground layouts means providing children a place to let their imaginations run wild.
From the technical details and safety provisions to the fitness considerations and creative properties, School Daz, Inc. designs playgrounds for kids with kids’ best interests in mind. Contact us to discuss our design philosophy or better yet, see it in action by completing our design brief.
