Storytelling

Design always tells a story. It speaks of needs, desires, ideas, work, hands and minds, technology and philosophy. Playground design does the same.

Standard plastic-and-metal post-anddeck playgrounds that are found in every municipal playground or schoolyard tell their story: one of concerns over safety and fears of litigation, and freedom translated into risk management.

If we want different stories—ones that are complex, hopeful, joyful, and inclusive—we need to make different decisions when it comes to how playgrounds are designed and built. Sometimes, storytelling in Earthscape playgrounds takes the shape of direct representations. Native birds that frequent neighbouring forests might become large, scalable play structures. Such sites often include interpretive signs that speak to visitors about native habitats and their residents. In other cases, stories are abstract. Ideas are hinted at in the shape of cladding or through colour. The tall walls of a playground tower are built to resemble the flow of grasses.

A geometrical sculpture is revealed, from a particular vantage point, to echo the shape of mountains on the horizon; alternatively, it might bring to mind the angular rocks that slice through nearby streams and rapids. On this sculpture, the bodies of moving children become, like the water over the rocks, part of the stories being told or created. Of course, storytelling does not begin in design offices. Stories from communities direct ideas and iterations. Such is the case of the Willie “Woo Woo” Wong playground in San Francisco, California, where the classic Chinese folk story pairing, the dragon and the phoenix, was suggested by the residents and visitors of the surrounding Chinatown and now rests in the finished playscape.