Grants for Youth and the Outdoors

We've added a new bar to the right where we will provide links for grants related to youth and children being outside and enjoying the things that outside has to offer. Please let us know about grants that we don't have listed yet!

New: Playscapes Forum

From the maker of the great Playscapes blog comes a forum for all sorts of related interaction. Have a look:
Playspaces Forum.

Snow Choreography

A neat project in Buffalo, where a faculty member was asked to develop choreography for a snow movement master plan (Front Park - An Olmsted Park). I really like how this is treating a landscape as a purely "winter designed" landscape. With pathways and mounds, this is an experience that you will only have in the winter. For how often landscapes are designed for the summer months (and hope for the best in the winter)... this is a refreshing paradigm shift. We also really like how this was modeled with what looks to be sugar.

Playspace Design Guide

A new revision to our "Playspace Ideas Guide":

Winnipeg Warming Huts - 2010 winners

These are the 2010 winners for this "Art  & Architecture Competition On Ice" where people are asked to design warming huts for this downtown river area in Winnipeg. Warming huts can make the difference between a fantastic day out skating (or otherwise enjoying the ice) and a miserable outing (nothing like having cold children). Add art and architecture, and you have something warm AND cerebral (or just pretty).

Marketing to feed the family...

This blog is definitely intended as a way for us to share interesting things that we find (and do) related to a fairly broad definition of play. We're landscape architects, so design work is how we feed our families... so, once in a while we'll be shameless and include material that focuses on us. We are a general landscape architectural and planning practice, but this is definitely one area we find to be rewarding (and fun!).

We'll be at the AEYC Early Childhoood Conference in Juneau tomorrow to listen and share... here are some boards that we put together for that:

Fur Rondy (and beyond) - Town Square

Anchorage is a Winter City. We have all of the same issues that other cities have when it comes to making our downtown alive and vibrant, plus the challenges of cold and dark. We need opportunities and events that can help us triumph against our urge to hibernate. This starts to get a bit easier at this time of year, when you can really feel the sunshine! Each day at the moment adds over five minutes to our days (over 35 minutes a week!). There's nothing like getting out and photosynthesizing.

One of our public spaces is adjacent to our Performing Arts Center - Town Square. This gets flooded in the winter for skating, and is the location for annual ice carving. Some people use it for skating during their lunch hours or other times of the day, but this space can really come alive when there are downtown events like Fur Rondy. The daytime photos below are from Fur Rondy, but the night time ones are from around Christmas a few months ago when they had just finished up the ice sculptures.

Clear and sunny... nothing better.

 

Strings of LED lights on all of the trees.

Fibre-optic lighting built-in for this reason.

Kids playing in a snow labyrinth.

Easter Island

Sundae = cold headache?

Fun lighting adding night-time interest.