Healthy and pleasant activity spaces play an important role in children's growth, but some children's play spaces are mainly designed as visual expressions, squeezing the space that originally belonged to children in the pursuit of stylization and formal beauty. So how can you create a child-friendly play place or space while maintaining aesthetics?
The idea and theme of the design
Children's play space should be a space to release nature, children's play space should be designed through children's thinking and perspectives to fit the theme of children's nature, in addition to fixed game equipment, should be injected to promote children's initiative to create, play, cooperate elements.
For example, using a variety of different trees, shrubs, and roads to design a certain kind of adventure route; Provide practice bases such as plantations, which can help teachers or parents to develop children's hands-on and brain skills. It should be noted here that children of different ages have different levels of acceptance of things, and can appropriately set up practice projects at different levels and with multiple elements.
If possible, children's ideas can be added in the design stage, children's participation is an effective way to improve the quality of children's space supply, and children's ideas are respected and implemented, which already represents the satisfaction of participation, and it is not necessarily necessary to further rely on norms and standards to complete the basic guarantee.
Spatial layout
For the layout of the game space, the first thing to determine is that it can meet the function, and the second is its constituent elements and enclosure.
If it's a spacious green space outdoors, divide the areas into different areas to avoid interference between different ages, and also take care to make it easy for children to reach. If it is a space of popular science education, the usage rate will be relatively low, and it can be flexibly set up in the sub-key position, leisure activity venue, and set up less auxiliary children's play space, which is the enrichment of the leisure area, and can also meet the needs of children to a certain extent.
Event venues
Outdoor activity venues should avoid areas with high wind speed and areas with excessive building shading, which can increase the topographic changes of the space to increase the diversity of the venue. The spatial boundaries should be appropriately blurred, and enclosed with different intensities through terrain, vegetation, buildings, and fences. Open lawns and mounds are places for children to gather, and these areas can be appropriately isolated from the main landscape, and the plants are densely planted to preserve the visibility and ease of care.
Game facilities
The most important requirements for gaming facilities are safety, reliability and appropriate scale.
In terms of safety, the 1.5m around the facility is used as a buffer zone, and no obstacles can be set up in the buffer zone, and the cushioning material can be made of bark, wood chips, gravel, etc., and the thickness of the laying is not less than 30cm. The suspension height of flexible components such as ropes and cables in the site should not be less than 1.8m and painted with bright colors for easy distinction, and the inner diameter of structures with openings should be less than 9cm or more than 23cm.
In terms of size, children have different physical and psychological needs at different ages, and facilities should be based on ergonomics to divide the height, limb length, and range of motion of children of different ages. A scaled-down version of the play facility that is child-friendly can give children a sense of identity and intimacy.
Security management
There are often many sources of danger in the play space, such as improper material handling on the surface of the instrument, no buffer zone, plant planting, etc., which will bring different degrees of safety risks, but at the same time, it is also necessary to take into account that the growth of children needs some appropriate risks to avoid children being overprotected and causing closure, so that children lose their sense of adventure.
Therefore, in the safety management of children's play space, the design should appropriately add protective facilities for children, and the materials of the facilities should be durable and easy to maintain, so as to prevent accidents such as children falling and getting stuck and pinched. After that, it is more important to maintain and manage the later stage, regularly inspect the equipment, stop and warn the facilities with potential safety hazards, and update and transform the old and abandoned facilities to ensure the normal operation and use of the children's play space.
Practical examples
In the practice of an outdoor playground in a kindergarten, the designer designed the site through child psychology and communication with the person in charge of the kindergarten. The whole site is divided into different functional areas, and there are a lot of blank spaces in each functional area, and the blank space can give children creativity to play. In order to make the site more diverse, the terrain changes are increased through later construction. There is no need to look for a place to play, children can look for a space with a tree and build a field under the tree. Among them, 3-4 year olds and 4-6 year olds tend to improve children's perception and risk-taking. If the site is exposed to the sun, no one will use it, so the time of use and the direction of sunlight are considered in the venue, and the function of shade is also done through the toys themselves.
Children have different perspectives and behaviors from adults, they integrate play elements into their lives in an all-round way, interact with nature and society through play, and gradually understand and construct themselves. Children's play spaces should be designed to meet the physical and mental needs of children of different ages, and at the same time improve children's interaction and participation with facilities and spaces, so as to promote children's physical and mental growth.