How to Grow a Playspace: Development and Design

Abstract

Review: How to Grow a Playspace: Development and Design 191 How to Grow a Playspace: Development and Design Katherine Masiulanis and Elizabeth Cummins, Editors (2017) Oxford (UK) and New York (USA): Routledge, 348 pages£36.99 (paperback); ISBN: 978-1-138-90706-5 How to Grow a Playspace: Development and Design is edited by two landscape architects and brings together chapter contributions from authors with many years of experience from a diversity of fields including the history of childhood, child development, psychology, play, education, children’s advocacy, children’s rights, primary schools, forest schools, playwork, various expressions of art, urban planning and landscape architecture. The richness of these experiences and knowledge are brought together in a well-ordered and structured book with six sections each with a title related to growing of plants: Ground, Sowing, Seedlings, Sprouts, Saplings and The Potting Shed. The first section is a brief introduction that reaffirms the child’s right to play under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and posits the questions: What makes a great playspace? How do you go about designing a great playspace? The following sections and the 43 brief chapters address these questions, but they also provide challenges to the concept of what a playspace is and whether they are needed at all in some contexts. Section 2 starts with a brief history of playspaces before moving on to discuss perceptions of play, and the importance of play for cognitive development touching on exploration, challenge and social interaction. The design of spaces for the affordances they support in children’s play are then explored in a specific pre-school setting, which leads to suggested elements within settings that support specific activities. Some differences between how adults and children perceive and use spaces leads to sections about play being facilitated, or not, in contrasting cities in contexts of a rooftop, a gated community and streets. This section concludes with two chapters about designing inclusive playspaces, the first providing insights into some of the impairments children might experience and the second suggesting how playspaces can support the play of disabled children. The next three sections each begin with a short introduction to child development from birth to age 5, ages 5-9, and ages 9-14, with the caveat that development is not only a factor of age but can be influenced by other factors, setting the stage for the ways in which play environments can also influence children’s development. Section three moves on to a discussion about the natural environment and the benefits this can have for children, and the ways in which natural elements can be a focus for play spaces. Planting, water and rocks are discussed for the affordances they support, and the importance of sensory experiences is also touched upon. Examples are given of these natural elements in specific settings for early years, forest schools, children’s gardens and a large public play space. Book Review: How to Grow a Playspace: Development and Design 192 Section four’s introduction to the development of 5-9-year-olds leads to four chapters explicitly focused on creativity, including colors, materials, art represented in different forms, and child-led creativity, which are discussed by drawing upon inspirational examples at different scales from entire parks to ground-level details. The second part of this section is entitled “schools,” although this does not accurately reflect the content of all four chapters. The first provides a little discussion about some of the play and activities that can often be seen in school playgrounds, and the third chapter focuses on one school where history, ambition and ethos supported the development of a ground-breaking approach to a school playground. However, the second chapter, which provides a theoretical and stimulating discussion about the use of slides, is not related to the specific space of school playgrounds. The fourth and last chapter of this section is set in the context of a refugee camp where protected space can be important for children’s safety but also provides an environment for learning and dealing with some of the differences and difficult experiences the children may have been through. Section five opens with a discourse...