Designing for Play

This title was first published in 2001. Architects, landscape designers, builders, gardeners and teachers have all at some time been called upon to design a play area. Unfortunately, this diversity has not resulted in a similar diversity of design solutions for this very problematic task. Despite a proliferation of "how to" books on this subject, playgrounds have remained virtually the same throughout the world since their creation over a century ago.

This is not a "how to" design book. Instead, based on thirty years experience as a specialist play area designer, Barbara Hendricks details a radically new approach, applying cutting-edge thinking from child development and child psychology to find innovative design solutions, challenging the established notions of play provision. Covering key sociological, public policy, environmental and design issues, this book provides designers with an exploration of, and guide to, designing from a "child''s eye" view of the world.

Beautifully crafted and copiously illustrated with numerous examples of recently designed playgrounds, this book is not only stimulating and informative, but fun to read and seriously playful in itself.