Grounds for Play

NYRA and Urban Omnibus converged on Zoom and in Brooklyn for Grounds for Play with Mariana Mogilevich, Julia Jacquette, and Marie Warsh, all three of whom have recently published books on adventure playgrounds in NYC. At the core of the sites and stories shared was the fact that children are experts at making their own worlds, and so any good play space in the city has to be in support of what kids are already doing. This is the core appeal of the adventure playground as a non-prescriptive and topographic vehicle for play.

The villains of the night weren’t risk-averse designers, but the reality of what it takes to maintain and care for exciting spaces for kids in a changing world. The aesthetics of play have less to do with sterility and bright colors and more with textured spaces of expansive possibility — characteristics we should demand of all public spaces.