Home
About Us
Events
News
- Add News
- Page 2
Directory
Resources
Contact
Friends of Daisy Farm Park, Billesley.
Bringing our children back to the mother ship
The play grounds of Copenhagen, a personal experience.
Thanks to the stories and fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson, the city of Copenhagen will forever be linked with influencing the lives of children and recently this is currently being repeated through the work of the city’s landscape architect, Helle Nebelong.
Over the last nine years, Helle has been designing a number of exciting children’s play spaces, using in the main natural landscape features instead of manufactured equipment, her ultimate ambition, being to provide a real alternative to the more traditional play area. Whilst this exciting concept is starting to gain recognition on an international basis, it is the children of Copenhagen however and their use of these new play areas that will ultimately decide if her objectives have been achieved. Intrigued by Helle’s ideas, Simeon Packard, Principal of the Urban Play Solutions Company, visited Copenhagen to find out for himself.
Valbyparken is the largest public park within Copenhagen and following the city’s designation as European city of culture in 1996 has been totally renovated.Covering an area of 20,000 square meters, Natures Play Ground, as the play is called, is not difficult to locate within the park and with an architectural, almost cartoon like tower rising from the middle of the scheme, you cannot help but be instantly drawn to the area. Consisting of a number of large landscaped mounds interspersed by an imaginary river of sand, gravel, boulders and tree stumps, the main features are linked by a circular 210 meter wooden platform, broken only occasionally by small areas of woodland and number of architectural towers. With the exception of one of these towers, which featured a display of stained glass, all of the colours are provided by nature and as such the whole area has a wonderfully organic and peaceful feel about it.Real success however can only be judged by its value as an area for play and having observed its use for a number of hours, it was apparent that the children were making extremely full and imaginative use of all features within the site.
Tree stumps were extremely popular as climbing frames, steep banks situated on the side of the mounds were constantly being negotiated and the raised wooden platform led children to a host of undiscovered and hidden places and features.
What was also extremely enlightening , was the way in which parents were also able to take part and share in their children’s play activities, often joining in with the games their offspring had themselves invented.
From a perspective of safety, there was nothing on the site that presented a risk any greater than that provided by a traditional play area and in fact it was probably safer.
I did see one child fall as he attempted to climb up a steep bank but all he did was brush himself down and proceed by another route, no harm done and another small lesson learned.
Garden of Senses, the second play area visited, is situated within Faelledparken.
Opened to the public in 1996 its original aim being to awaken children’s interest in the diversity and richness of nature.
Whilst it has been designed on a much smaller scale to that of Natures Play Ground, once more, a winding path leads the children through a maze of natural features and experiences.
Gravel and carefully placed large stones have again created an imaginary river, broken this time however, by islands of bamboo and lavender.
Lines of carefully placed wooden stakes provide ample opportunities for children to hide and a number of small abstract sculptures supply yet further intrigue for their young developing minds.
Children playing in the area demonstrated highly imaginative use of the features and as before, parents if they wished, were able to join in with the various activities.
So was Helle’s ambition to create a viable alternative to traditional play areas achieved?
From a personal perspective this has to be a resounding yes.
Natures Play Ground and the Sensory Garden, presents children with a wide variety of opportunities for both physical, creative and imaginary play.
Unlike normal play areas, there was nothing on either of the two sites that pretended to be, for example, a castle, space ship or train.
Instead ,Helle Nebelong has provided a rich canvass on to which, children through use of their imagination are able to create and apply ideas of their own, making the opportunities for all types of play to become endless.
With the current batch of modern, seemingly cloned play areas following an inter galactic space exploration theme, I came away with the firm belief that perhaps it really is time to consider bringing our children back to re discover the delights of the mother ship.
For further information regarding this article Simeon Packard can be contacted directly at www.urbanplaysolutions.co.uk or by e-mail.
More natural creative and sustainable environments for play. www.naturalplaygrounds.co.uk
For further details on the work of Helle Nebelong visit her website.
Copyright Simeon Packard, 2005.