Designing for PlayArchitects, 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. |
Contents
Not a Design Story | |
Design and Aesthetics In Relationship to Play | |
Societys Criteria | |
Childrens Criteria | |
Designers Criteria | |
Putting it All Together | |
Play Yards with Early Childhood Institutions | |
Play Areas at Public Parks Unsupervised | |
Designing for Play at School | |
Green Children and other Trends in Playgrounds | |
Magic in the Play Area | |
Playing with the Future | |
Suggestions for the Layout of Playgrounds | |
Safety Guidelines and Standards | |
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Common terms and phrases
adult designers aesthetic artist aspects beauty Bruno Bettelheim Buckminster Fuller centre century challenging child childhood children need children's play civilisation colour comfortable create creative culture Denmark designed play designing for children's designing for play enjoy environmental everyday experience explore feel firepole ground happen human ideas important indoors institutions interaction kinds of play landscape architects learning living magic means metres movement nature playground neighbourhood open spaces organisation outdoor play outdoor spaces person physical play plants play activities play area design play environment play equipment play items play opportunities play possibilities play provision play spaces play structures play yard playful playground design playground equipment pre-school public parks public play public playgrounds public spaces role safety sand school yard seen sense signal slides social society standard surface swings things toys urban visual western young children