Learning to Play Again: Playground Designs That Create Opportunities for Spontaneous and Unstructured Play

The benefits and necessity of play for children have been well researched and documented. This project looks into unstructured and spontaneous play—activities that could encourage confidence and creativity—in the context of contemporary outdoor playgrounds and adventure playgrounds, and how playground instructions (both overt and covert) and the general design characteristics of these playgrounds affect the way children play around them. The proposal developed within this project suggests possible ways of merging the best characteristics of adventure and contemporary playgrounds into solutions that offer increased opportunities for spontaneous and unstructured play for children from a speculative design standpoint. It also touches on additional considerations that could situate the proposal into more plausible solutions: for example, reconfiguring an existing site’s components to enhance it, or utilizing an otherwise unused parcel of land, amongst others.