How to tell a good playground from an impressive one
Crisel from Baumhaus describes what an open-ended playground looks like
Crisel suggested looking at the different ways a child can explore, rather than just going up and down a slide. Hidden routes, quiet corners and small discoveries are things that that catch your curiosity, not the perfectly manicured playground
Baumhaus is the No 2 Kindermusik school globally and has taught over 4,000 children since 2016, it is founded by Crisel and Carsten
Hong Kong has many many pristine playgrounds, what I wanted to know is the thinking behind the design for a playground, and what it is that keeps a child interested
She also pointed out the quiet nooks. That felt worth remembering when choosing somewhere for a child who may want a break from a busy room.
I asked what is wrong with a standard playground
“If you have a playground that looks impressive for us adults, there’s a beautiful winding staircase and it slides down… for a child that’s just: I climb up the stairs, I slide down. It’s just very basic and there’s no other open-ended element to it.”
“It’s a maze, so there’s no one way around it. You wanna get to the top — there’s probably at least 15 different permutations to get there.”
I asked what you design for.
“Even how compact this play space is, there must be several areas where it’s a nook. There’s a quiet area down. There’s a quiet area up here. We’ve had adults climb up all the way there and calm themselves down.”
“The goal is never: you have a target, you need to go up there. The child decides when they’re ready.”
“When you do get up there, the feeling of satisfaction is so much more than if we said, ‘Come, I will carry you.’”
“We want to trust that children are intelligent. They can measure and they can learn.”
I asked about the corners where kids can bump their heads.
“If your child goes through this and they bump their head once — we trust that they’re gonna be smart enough to figure out, ‘Oh, okay, I actually don’t fit through here. Let me go through the bigger part, or maybe I should duck.’ It’s small bumps, and this is part of childhood.”
Look for a few different ways in and around the area, some quiet corners and notice the texture and shapes - see what attracts your child's attention
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