Activity types at site

To have a well functioning playscape is important for children’s social, physical and mental health and development, and will influence their well-being and self-esteem (Copenhagen Municipality, Play area design guidelines 2019). At the moment, the inner schoolyard has a lot of activities and the outer school ground mainly has ball-games and some sitting opportunities. A lot of the benches in the area are worn and in some areas even broken. As seen on the activity diagram, the yellow activity types, which are Running and riding games, are currently the most dominant. Especially in the outer school ground, there are often no other activity types present near this activity, as for example options for sitting or gathering for those not wanting to participate physically in ballgame activities. Similar to the observations on site, research has found a difference between the use of outdoor space in relation to girls and boys. Even though it can seem generalising, boys do, in these studies, prefer areas with sports games whereas girls were more attracted to areas, where they could gather, socialise and walk (Mäkinen & Tyrväinen 2008). According to the same study, the girls valued being in beautiful, peaceful and quiet surroundings higher than the boys. Therefore the future design could incorporate more options for walking in pleasant and inspiring surroundings to create a variated school ground suitable for a wider group of people.

The different zones in the school can also be regarded as active and passive zones. The inner schoolyard is very active, together with the big football field, whereas the outer schoolyard is more passive. This passive zone is not necessarily a bad thing, as it is more quiet. The future design should still keep a balance between this quietness and a new activity layer.

different types of social playscapes are occurring spontaneously and are all set in dense vegetation functioning as dens. This highlights the importance of vegetation and its many possibilities.

Diagram: Distribution of different activity-types

Eat and rest Balancing

Movement coordination and climbing

Social playscapes and participation Construction and transformation play Running and riding games equipment

Areas for running and riding games should be minimized. This analysis is made with inspiration from the play area assessment tool (Copenhagen Municipality, Play area design guidelines 2019). All the