Helle Nebelong and a number of other prominent contemporary designers talking about the renaissance of common sense and adventure playgrounds in Europe and the US. We may get back to it in another 50 years.
Evergreen’s Toronto Brick Works
This is an eclectic play space that feels as wild as the postwar adventure playgrounds – less dangerous, but liberating. The presence of nature here, Nebelong argues, is crucial. “If you ask children what they want, … they have lots of ideas about bushes and trees where they can pick apples,” she says. “It’s a grownup approach that all things to do with childhood should be colourful, and have heavy equipment and horrible rubber in lots of colours.”……….
Beginning in the 1970s, driven partly by a handful of lawsuits from the parents of injured children, official opinion began to focus on what might go wrong. Safety regulations in the United States and Canada became stiffer and began to alter the landscape.“In some ways, the lawyers were designing the playgrounds,”