Designing for Play
Hendricks, Barbara (2001).
Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate; 267 pages. $75.95. ISBN 0754613208.
On the back cover of this volume, the author is presented as a "specialist play area designer" with 30 years experience. The book itself is presented not as a “how to” book, but as a radically new approach, applying cutting-edge thinking from child development and child psychology to find innovative design solutions. By challenging the established notions of play provision, and covering key sociological, public policy, environmental and design issues, this book intends to provides designers with an exploration of, and guide to, designing from a "child's eye" view of the world.
As a designer of children's play environments myself, I turned the cover with high expectations, especially as it promises the reader a book that is "beautifully crafted and copiously illustrated with numerous examples of recently designed playgrounds."
The first eight chapters (of 14 in total) of Designing for Play discuss a variety of design-related topics, such as play, design history, aesthetics, design criteria of society, children and designers, and other design issues. Further chapters address playgrounds in the context of early childhood institutions, public parks and schools, as well as current trends in playground design. Closing chapters address the broad topics of "Magic in the Playground" and "Playing with the Future." This leaves only four chapters, less than one-third of the book, to deal with the design of specific types of playgrounds.
Moreover, with such an all-encompassing title, one might have expected Designing for Play to cover more than the design of outdoor play areas. Indoor play environments such as toy libraries and children's museums are neglected, as are those in public facilities such as airports, railway stations and shopping centers. Play design in children's institutions such as hospitals and special education facilities is a further topic needing exposure. The book contains no discussion of play design in the domestic realm where the design message can really come across to parents. Even in the outdoor realm, the book ignores relevant “old” models of contemporary practice such as city farms and adventure playgrounds.
Leaving aside the mismatch between the book's title and content, what does Designing for Play address? The book's basic premise is that the field of designing children's outdoor spaces not responded to the dramatic cultural changes of the past 30 years. However, changes in play space design have occurred, some of which Hendricks indeed discusses, such as advances in playground safety. Additionally, the author criticizes the inclusion of commercial play equipment on public playgrounds as contributing to the commercialization of childhood, yet she apparently consults for one of the best known manufacturers and writes sometimes as if she were a lobbyist.
The astute reader will deduce early that Designing for Play is a Scandinavian book (translated from the Danish) and its scope does not extend beyond Northern Europe apart from occasional references to playground developments in the United States and Canada. The many amorphous generalizations made in the book presumably apply to this context; however, there is no explicit reference to the geographic limitations of the volume. The most interesting project presented in the book is the Four Seasons Play Garden, the outdoor space of a kindergarten in Ring, Denmark. The layout was designed by the author with Tom Lindhardt Wils, a Danish artist, play equipment designer, and founder of Kompan. The kindergarten appears to be an example of the progressive "outdoors-in-all-weathers" Scandinavian model. However, the author does not explain this even though she worked with the teaching staff to convince them to install an unconventional play environment.
I wish Hendricks had devoted more space to such examples. Three and a half pages of general description including a single photograph and a small sketch of the layout tantalized more than delivered useful design information- but then, the book was not intended to be a "how to" guide. This is unfortunate. What designers such as myself crave are specific, technical details about physical design. What was the width and length of that circular trike pathway? What was the surfacing material? How was surface runoff treated? How was snow clearance handled in the winter? Which design features supported winter use? What principles governed the planting design and choice of plant species? How were planted areas protected from foot traffic? How was the kitchen garden laid out? How did children manage it? How were children and teachers involved in the design process? And so on.
A strange aspect of the book is that the author spends more space critiquing what she calls the "nature playground movement" than she devotes to the Four Seasons Play Garden- which to this reader appears to be an interesting example of design for outdoor play and learning in nature. According to Hendricks, "nature playground provision in many countries" has been pursued because funding is available for “nature experiences” but not "traditional play facilities" (p. 203). She cites and discredits research about nature playgrounds, and asserts that they are simply a reaction against consumerism and modern culture, a poor substitute for real nature born of adults’ guilt about the state of the planet (p. 213). Indeed, her discussion of children, adults, and nature is inconsistent and difficult to follow. Based on her commentary, nature playgrounds seem to be controversial in Denmark, but it is unclear why. Photographs to illustrate specific points of contention would have helped comprehension of this point.
The general tone of the book is negative and reactionary. The author's criticisms range from design specifics (a repeated objection to dead tree trunks as play features), to critiques of research (an unqualified statement that the Swedish investigations of the impact of nature on child development are invalid), to musings about what is not and what is nature to the child (answer: "living things"), to comments about consumerism and environmentalism (both have negative impacts on children's play environments).
Throughout Designing for Play, the author attempts to contrast the issues of play area design from two perspectives. First, children (sometimes differentiated into age groups with varied developmental needs, but often lumped together as generalized children's needs); and second, adults (and society), who do not know much as parents, teachers or designers and who are generally neglectful of children's needs- play in particular. The author makes points that none of us working in this field would disagree with, especially the marginalization of children's interests by society. However, I find it frustrating that she does not address such issues through design. What can design and designers do to provide more play through "good design" as Hendricks calls it (without ever succinctly defining it)? "Functional" is presented as negative versus "aesthetic" as positive. Surely "good design" combines both aspects. Discussion of design is constantly diverted by tangential topics (some of them annoyingly repetitive and inconsistent with each other) that obscure the main line of argument.
In an effort to distinguish "play" from “learning" and "education," Hendricks erroneously tells us that the "Children's Right to Play (1989) is a subsection of the Child's Right to Education" in the "children's convention of the United Nations" [sic] (50). This amazingly garbled presentation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Article 31, dealing with the child's right to play, and Articles 28 and 29, dealing with the right to education, is inexcusable. It is either an error of translation or the author has not properly done her homework. Contentions by the author about the lack of children's play environment research reinforce the latter impression. In reality, as we know, there is a substantial design research literature dating from the 1970s and early 1980s, much of it published in Children's Environments (the predecessor of this re-launched, on-line journal). Valuable sources also include the proceedings of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) and the International Association for the Study of People and their Physical Surroundings (IAPS). Some of this research has been translated into evidence-based, design guidelines.
The primary problem for designers of children's environments today is not the lack of research or design guidelines but the weak political standing of children and play. How can we get our designs built at a cost the community is willing to pay? In some countries, of equal importance is how to navigate dominant health and safety regulations and liability paranoia. These are issues with which designers need help from others who have success stories to share. We also can always use technical construction detail. As this type of material was absent from Designing for Play, it is difficult to fathom who the audience is- certainly it is not professional designers.
A dozen case studies of different types of play areas in a variety of contexts demonstrating "best practice" would have provided a valuable resource for designers. There is a need to move the state of the art beyond the several existing playground design books that have served the field well but that some designers may now consider dated. Hendrick's book does not meet this need, although it could possibly be used to raise talking points in an undergraduate landscape design class. However, the danger is that it would confuse the students more than clarify the issues.
The book is not “copiously illustrated” as the cover states. A modest number of photographs of variable quality, presumably by the author (credit is not given) are scattered through the book. Designs are not credited in the photo captions either. There are only two plan view design drawings in the whole book. Overall, the translation is good, although the many unnecessary definitive articles and occasional word reversals weaken the text. A greater problem is the surfeit of typographical errors throughout the book.
There are occasional juicy passages in the book, such as the European perspective on poisonous plants (p.122) which lists just half a dozen species with really toxic seeds, berries or foliage that should be avoided. As to other supposed "poisonous plants," Hendricks essentially tells us not to worry because children are not going to ever eat enough to get sick (an opinion I heartily endorse). This passage is one of several addressing play and playground design worth restating for a new generation of designers. However, the reader has to work hard to find these occasional valuable nuggets.
Reviewer Information
College of Design North Carolina State University
Robin C. Moore was a student of Kevin Lynch in urban planning at MIT and also holds an architecture degree from London University. He is professor of landscape architecture and director of the Natural Learning Initiative, North Carolina State University, and a principal in the firm of Moore Iacofano Goltsman. Prof. Moore is an international authority on the design of children's play and learning environments, user needs, and participatory design programming of urban environments. He is a member of the Growing Up in Cities UNESCO-sponsored, international participatory action research team.