how can be a playground designed?

Playground Ideas – Playgrounds for Kids who Need it the Most

At a recent meeting organized by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, a speaker pointed out that a graduate in Australia earning $ 38, 000 a year, although faced with the economic pressures of living in the first world, is still in the 1.6% of highest income earners in the world. Designers often forget that much of our focus is designing for this elite percentile. It is not that we don’t want to design for the rest, but often we cannot or do not know how. It is a logistically and economically challenging endeavour, which requires a great deal of commitment and self-belief.


Everyone wants a turn.

Playground Ideas is the brainchild of teacher and builder Marcus Veerman. Playground Ideas is commissioned by villages, centers, and communities around the world to provide well-constructed playgrounds using locally sourced materials and labor with the assistance of his team and volunteers. Much of the world’s children do not have opportunities to play. A Kenyan study showed that Kenyan kids get 17 minutes of play per day compared to the 3 hours that western kids receive. Without play, children do not develop their social and cognitive skills, which prevents potential through life. Many of these kids are in situations where providing food and clean water is a challenge let alone providing the infrastructure for play.

To Marcus it is not just about providing play from recycled materials, it is also about building these playgrounds in a way which is structurally sound and safe for kids.

Playgrounds

The first was a small wooden playground in north central Thailand for a theatre community space built from materials found in the local tiny town like thatch timber, recycled motorbike bearings, scrap steel and rope. The design was workshopped with local kids from surrounding schools and was built for $600.


Children enjoying the perks of an alternative playground.

From this humble beginning the concept has strengthened. The largest project was just completed in Kenya in June and was located in the 3rdlargest slum in Kenya consisting of 2,000 kids. The school director brief was “I don’t want a playground, I want this school to be an entirely playable space.” Space in a slum is precious, but with so many kids we needed a lot of things for the children to play on, otherwise there would be crushes. In the end, there was 8 different nooks created throughout the space and each was filled with custom elements based around the feedback from the community consultation with the principal, teachers, parents and most importantly the children themselves. The photos speak for themselves.

What about kids in your own backyard

One criticism of what is sarcastically called “world vision” design projects is that it seeks to help others while there are many problems designers need to address in their own backyard. I asked Marcus if there were scopes for projects in the west. They have recently been part of a recently completed playground upgrade in Melbourne that has just been finished. The design included some pretty adventurous elements and quite a lot of recycled, interesting stuff, but the end result was sadly a very watered down version likely because of funding and safety fears. During the community consultation some people seemed less concerned about their own children and being creative and more worried about being too “out there” because other parents wouldn’t like it. Maybe it is these sorts of attitudes, which inspires designers like Marcus to work in the third world. There, the idea of facilitating play is accepted gratefully and not seen as another expected amenity.

Realities of funding such a project

The largest barrier to the organization is funding. One way that Playground Ideas funds itself is by offering online resources to other communities wishing to construct a playground. They offer advertising and a mini corporate social responsibility program for playground and landscape architecture companies to get involved. This is a great, affordable way for landscape architecture studios to help out and get some online advertising space. They also operate under a fee-for-service when the scale is large enough to warrant our help on site. These costs help the 25 staff of the organization continue their work at a cost, which is affordable cost for both parties. As you can imagine, playgrounds in the third world does not attract the investment dollars of a large western project.



Fun to be had at the new play park.

Get involved

There are three ways anyone can get involved. Firstly, you can volunteer and spend time on a project, which is as rewarding for the volunteer as much as the child who will use the playground. They are also developing an online database of ideas, which anyone can contribute to. So if you’re looking for a place of karmic goodness to channel your ideas, you may want to look at the website and start thinking about ways your ideas can help others. Finally, you can become a supporter and donate to this not-for-profit organization. Playground Ideas also gives you the option of donating directly to the project itself.

Playground Ideas is a two-way street. Designers are exposed to design situations and communities they do not regularly encounter. It gives us a chance to let go from the reality of long hours at a desk working on parts of a city we may or may not care about. It gives graduates who cannot find work an avenue to use their skills in a forum which has space for their participation. It gives kids and communities the opportunity to play and develop in situations where they otherwise would not have the chance. It most importantly brings smiles to the faces of many kids who otherwise have little reason to smile.