Designing for Play CreatingChild-Friendly
Environments for Public Use
by Jennette Emery-Wallis BA Hons DipLA CMLI, Director of Landscape Architecture, LUC www.landuse.co.uk Much has changed from the standard ‘KFC’ (kit, fence, carpet) playgrounds that had been the norm for most UK playgrounds for a number of years. Their homogenised collection of poorly selected catalogue-based play elements, set in wet pour safety surfacing within a railing enclosure offered little to no play value for children. Today the Natural Play movement is well established and the use of landscape design and natural materials to create playful settings with more abstract and less directed play forms is becoming more commonplace. Most significantly, these spaces include risk - not outright danger, but a series of layered challenges to develop children’s ability to assess and build skill. Play and health specialists commonly agree that playgrounds, be they in public parks or school settings, are one of the key places where children can freely explore and challenge their physical and mental abilities, gain social skills, and develop self-belief within a stimulating and safe environment. Children must take risks to learn how to assess risk, and respond to them appropriately. Our children can’t live bubble-wrapped lives.
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However, it is easy to forget this sense of freedom when client or stakeholder concerns over child safety or fears of liability can tip the ‘play value’ balance. If compromised or at worst omitted, it can lead to over-simplified and sanitised schemes which do little to engage the range of play typologies needed to wet a child’s appetite for adventure, and ultimately limits their personal growth and capacity for learning. So we must learn to stand firm. Over the last 10-15 years, a new breed of UK play safety specialists has emerged who support the use of a ‘risk versus play benefit’ analysis tool (initiated and spearheaded by Play England), which has enabled landscape architects and designers to maximise their creativeness and deliver high play-value schemes which include a healthy dose of risk.