When we picture a playground, stereotypical images often come to mind: colourful plastic slides, tubes, bridges, nets, and rubberised floors. As a general trend, playgrounds have become increasingly safer over the years, particularly those in more developed localities and upscale neighbourhoods. This has corresponded to a deeper microprogramming and monitoring of children’s play, widening, and deepening of parental involvement including more frequent intervention, and shrinkage of children’s autonomy of play including restriction of their freedom of exploration and tinkering.
The average American playground is fabricated to be sanitary, safe, and lawsuit-proof. US playground designers spent decades figuring out how to minimise risk: toning down heights, rounding and smothering sharp edges, softening surfaces, and limiting moveable elements. Elements which were long taken to be natural if not essential parts of playgrounds – pebbles, gravel, boulders, shrubs, thorny bushes, and even bugs, are increasingly being expunged from playgrounds citing concerns of safety and wellbeing. Even the very substrate – the ground is being modified to render it safer be it with soil treatment, soft layering, mat-laying, or the addition of other cushioning. There is tightening scrutiny of all elements present in the playground, even seemingly innocuous ones, which children could accidentally hurt themselves with, say by mis-wielding or falling.
Studies analysing outdoor play environments of children indicate that safety has assumed primacy among drivers of design for play spaces and that their free interaction with natural elements has waned over time. Their parents reflecting upon their youth frequently recall playing in natural settings and on their own, unsupervised and generally uninterrupted. The boom of protective parenting in the US, UK, and Western Europe over the past few decades has been attributed to the rising class divide (despite growing prosperity), rising returns to education, and high-intensity urban development. Overprotective and micro-managerial parenting is much more prevalent among middle and upper-middle-income families – low-income families have lower aspiration, awareness, means, and resources to devote to monitoring and regulating the everyday conduct of their children while high-income families are generally more aware and cognizant of finer intricacies of child development including the need for fostering creativity and independence.
Playgrounds in middle to middle-upper-class neighbourhoods are thus increasingly turning into artificial, micro-planned, hyper-sterilised niches – habitats insulated from their general surroundings and fitted with fixed, sturdily-designed static structures that minimise mobility of installations to reduce risks of injury. But not all playgrounds fit this mould. Enter adventure playgrounds — places devoid of plastic structures, where props like old tires, wood planks, crates, cardboard boxes, paint cans, metal pipes, and even tools such as hammers, and nails abound. Equipment is more in the form of potential tools, implements, and components with open-ended usage rather than rigid fixed-frame installations. Adventure playgrounds are based on the belief that children benefit from taking risks. 1,2,3
A Brief History of Adventure Playgrounds
Marjory Allen, a mid-century British landscape architect and child welfare advocate, played a pivotal role in the evolution of these unique play spaces. On a 1945 trip to Copenhagen, she encountered the work of Carl Theodor Sorensen, an architect who, during WWII, realised children were bypassing traditional playgrounds and choosing to play in places like construction sites and blast-debris zones. Sorensen’s response was innovative: he transformed an empty lot into a space where children could freely create using building materials and discarded items. These “junk playgrounds,” as he called them, became instant hits.
Inspired, Allen imported the concept to London but opted for a rebranding, calling them adventure playgrounds. The post-war environment, with its abundance of rubble, debris, and junk provided many opportunities for makeshift play areas. These innovative spaces proliferated globally, popping up in cities from Toronto to Tokyo. In the 2000s, there was a resurgence in interest in adventure playgrounds, sometimes blending with environmental and natural play movements, resulting in new playground designs that include elements of natural landscapes. Many adventure playgrounds have ‘playworkers’, professionals trained to facilitate but not direct children’s play. Others choose to have children left entirely unsupervised as even their awareness of being observed or having the presence of an adult around could deter their free exploration. There has been an increase in academic interest in the benefits of risk in play, with studies showing that riskier play environments can contribute to children’s physical and social development. Adventure playgrounds continue to evolve and adapt, with countries around the world interpreting the concept in various ways, sometimes integrating local cultural practices and materials. 3,4,5,6
The Underlying Philosophy
At the heart of the adventure playground philosophy is the idea of “controlled risk.” A risk differs from a hazard in that it’s an expected challenge and offers children a choice. Controlled risks can be categorised into six areas: heights, speed, tools, potentially dangerous elements, physical play, and the chance to explore freely or even get lost.
When designing these playgrounds, the separation of children and parents is crucial. This might involve physical barriers or simply creating appealing spaces for parents, ensuring they don’t interfere with their child’s play. These playgrounds also prioritise “loose parts” – items like barrels and tools that inspire creative, risky play.
The theory is that when children are presented with genuine risks, they approach play more thoughtfully and engage in deeper and more mindful exploration. When children experience mild consequences of the limited but readily available injurious elements, they become more cognisant, and thus more averse, of threats and their consequences, lowering their likelihood of taking greater risks and exposing themselves to severe hazards. The freedom to hurt themselves potentially unwittingly in moderation serves instructive, refining their sense of discernment and establishing more effective cycles of experimentative learning, boosting both cognitive skills as well as environmental awareness and knowledge. Conversely, overly sterile environments that insulate kids from even mild risks may lead them to unsuspectingly seek out potentially dangerous thrills not accounted for in the design and barely understood by them. Early and reasonably frequent exposure to moderated menaces means that children are aware, alert, and mindful of threats and would know better than to jeopardise themselves with major menaces. This can paradoxically lead to higher injury rates than seen in risk-embracing adventure playgrounds where risks are controlled.
For instance, certain adventure playgrounds contain small-sized hammers and nails conspicuously within their confines. Children are likely to curiously tinker with the nail and feel its sharpness or pick the hammer and accidentally strike their thumb or toe. This experience would get embedded in their plastic minds and ingrain in them a sense of responsible usage. They would become more perceptive and cautious of sharp, pointed objects and hard, heavy objects in general, lowering the likelihood of them getting injured by similar objects found in other settings such as their homes and schools. It is also less likely that the thought of venturing out of the playground to seek the thrill of curious play with similar items in other avenues, such as a hazard-filled construction site, would cross their mind. Children would engage in tinkering and experimentation with nails, hammers, and planks, trying to figure out new, interesting combinations and configurations, gradually fashioning increasingly refined constructs out of the available materials or devising innovative ways of working with them. 4,5,6,7
The Ups and Downs
As with any progressive idea, adventure playgrounds aren’t free from critique. Detractors argue that they are aesthetically displeasing, space-consuming, and resource-intensive. There’s also the contention that providing kids with tools is less about adventure and more about labour, conditioning them with conformist expectations and limiting free exploration with the burden of general, consistent productivity and conventionally construed sense of utility.
However, the benefits of these playgrounds are numerous with substantial evidence. Research has shown that children in riskier playgrounds are more active. For instance, a study found children in London’s adventure playgrounds to be 18% more active than their counterparts in traditional American play spaces. Additionally, these playgrounds were more cost-effective and recorded fewer injuries. Studies have consistently shown that children engaging in risky play develop enhanced risk detection, heightened creativity, and improved self-esteem. Hands-on play with diverse tools and terrain sharpens cognition and facilitates multifaceted learning ranging from the development of motor skills to refinement of lateral thinking, aside from enabling children to experientially learn to avoid risks and develop constructive know-how. It also aligns well with multiple intelligences theory, particularly benefitting kinesthetic, logical, visual, and naturalistic learners.
In research conducted by Morgan Leichter-Saxby and Jill Wood at Houston’s Parish School over five years, data revealed that the school’s traditional playground with fixed equipment had a higher incidence of serious injuries compared to its adventure playground, which, despite its seemingly riskier features, was statistically safer. This suggests that playgrounds with unstructured elements might not only be safer but also cost-effective and favoured among children.
Challenging the notion that such playgrounds are less frequented due to parental concerns, another study by Studioludo highlighted their appeal. Analysing playgrounds in London, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, the findings indicated that adventure playgrounds attracted 55% more visitors, including 14% more adults, encouraged significantly higher levels of physical activity among youth — up to 18% more — and were over 37% more economical to establish and maintain.
Adventure playgrounds, with their focus on repurposing materials and fostering child-led play, offer a unique perspective on sustainable development through frugal grassroots innovation. Adventure playgrounds typically make use of recycled and repurposed materials like old tires, scrap wood, and other discarded items. This reduces waste and the environmental impact associated with manufacturing new playground equipment. By using locally sourced, recycled materials, the carbon footprint associated with transporting new playground equipment from manufacturers to the site is significantly reduced. These playgrounds can be designed to integrate with the existing landscape, preserving the natural environment and reducing the need for extensive construction and landscaping that can disrupt local ecosystems.
Adventure playgrounds often encourage community involvement in their construction and maintenance. They can be built and managed by residents, which fosters a sense of ownership, stewardship, and social cohesion. These playgrounds can be designed to be inclusive, offering play opportunities for children of all abilities and socioeconomic backgrounds. Their adaptable nature means they can be modified and evolved to suit the needs of the community. They offer educational benefits by allowing children to learn through play about construction, teamwork, and the principles of mechanics. 8,9,10,11,12
Because adventure playgrounds utilise repurposed materials and community labour, they can be more cost-effective to build and maintain compared to traditional playgrounds. This bolsters their inclusivity and accessibility as they are more likely to be built and maintained by economically underprivileged communities and less likely to impose any restrictive usage charges. As needs and interests change, adventure playgrounds can be easily adapted. This adaptability extends their functional lifespan and prevents the need for costly overhauls. Adventure playgrounds represent not just a paradigm shift in playground design, but also in how communities can integrate sustainable practices into public spaces.
For architecture crafted for children, it must captivate its intended audience. If the standardised playground model fails to engage its participants, then perhaps it’s time to revisit its design – even if it’s perceived as riskier.
References:
1. Taylor, A. (2015). Safer Playgrounds Might be Hampering Kids in Other Ways. Columbia Tribune. Retrieved from https://www.columbiatribune.com/article/20150322/Lifestyle/303229878
2. Schwarz, D. (2019). Risky Play and Children’s Safety: Balancing Priorities for Optimal. NCBI. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8116185/
3. Sutton, L. (n.d.). Adventure Playgrounds: A Children’s World in the City. Hampshire College. Retrieved from adventureplaygrounds.hampshire.edu
4. Brussoni, M., et al. (2015). Risky Outdoor Play Has Many Positive Effects on Health. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4483710/
5. Brussoni, M., et al. (2015). Risky Play and Children’s Safety: Balancing Priorities for Optimal Child Development. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 9: 3134-3148. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8116185/
6. Sandborn, D. (2014). Adventure Playgrounds for Kids. Michigan State University Extension, Retrieved from https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/adventure_playgrounds_for_kids
7. Lakin S. (2014). Risky Play and Youth. Michigan State University Extension. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/risky_play_and_youth
8. Slater, S., Pugach, O., Lin, W., & Bontu, A. (2016). If You Build It Will They Come? Does Involving Community Groups in Playground Renovations Affect Park Utilization and Physical Activity? Environment and Behavior, 48(1): 246-265. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916515614368
9. Spencer, R. A., Joshi, N., Branje, K., Murray, N., Kirk, S. F., & Stone, M. R. (2021). Early Childhood Educator Perceptions of Risky Play in an Outdoor Loose Parts Intervention. AIMS Public Health, 8(2), 213–228. https://doi.org/10.3934/publichealth.2021017
10. Daniels, D. M., & Johnson, E. L. (2009). The Impact Of Community-Built Playgrounds On The Community. The Journal of Trauma, 67(1), S16–S19. https://doi.org/10.1097/TA.0b013e3181ac1400
11. Leichter-Saxby, M., & Wood, J. (2018). (rep.). Comparing Injury Rates on a Fixed Equipment Playground and an Adventure Playground. Pop-Up Adventure Play. Retrieved November 7, 2023, from https://popupadventureplaygrounds.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/parish-just-the-facts-final.pdf
12. London study of Playgrounds. Studio Ludo. (2017). https://www.studioludo.org/projects/London-Study-of-Playgrounds
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Pitamber Kaushik is a writer, journalist, columnist, educator, poet, and independent researcher. His writings have appeared in over 300 leading publications across 60+ countries.