21/10/2014
Parametric play
For its annual fall installation at Place Pasteur, the Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM) decided to create a structure that would invite the public to relax and take in the spectacle of the changing autumn leaves. Arup’s parametric design and advanced computation skills helped local architecture firm WANTED landscape (supported by UQAM design students) realize the unconventional structure.
18/10/2014
Sowing the Seeds - Reconnecting London's Children with Nature
London is known as a green city - approximately two-thirds of its area is defined as green space and many sites are rich in wildlife. Much work is underway to protect and develop this, most notably through the Mayor's Great Outdoors Strategy, the London Plan which seeks to address deficiencies in line with the Mayor's Biodiversity Strategy, and through partnerships such as the Green Grid, that seek to increase green space provision, and quality, at a local level. Through these, the provision of the resource has been the primary focus. More recently, for example through the Health Inequalities Strategy, the focus has shifted to the benefits of increasing the level and type of use.
The purposes of the research, commissioned from writer and researcher Tim Gill, were to summarise the benefits experienced by society from increasing the opportunity for children under the age of 12 to experience nature; identify the most successful interventions to encourage regular access to nature amongst children under the age of 12, and make policy recommendations to facilitate this in the mainstream.
Play Return on BBC website
The report, for the Children's Play Policy Forum, found play improved children's physical and mental health, as well as their emotional well-being.
It also found playtime in the school playground could enhance academic skills and attitudes and behaviour...
It also found playtime in the school playground could enhance academic skills and attitudes and behaviour...
16/10/2014
Ground Up City. Play as a Design Tool
I realised that playgrounds are never taken seriously in urban projects... Children and play are simply hardly ever mentioned... It's a field that has been neglected by architects.
Darell Hammond in Huffington Post
Across the United States, urban leaders are implementing a powerful idea: To compete, they need play.
PIP principle
The working hypothesis was that it would be useful to supplement the existing five existing good playground in the 15th district with a network of smaller playgrounds distributed throughout the neighbourhood according to what I call the PIP principle- PIP stands for Polycentric, Interstitial and Participatory....
15/10/2014
"Playing Out" in the Guardian
“It should be normal for kids to call on each other unannounced and say ‘can you come and play?’," says Alice Ferguson. "We need to get away from everything being prearranged and organised and scheduled.”
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/30/stop-the-traffic-how-we-got-children-to-play-in-the-streets-again
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