Elements of Playground
Our playground incorporates various handicapped amenities that provide accessibility and enjoyment to all disabled persons. Such amenities include a 4 foot ramp on the interactive pirate ship, a handicapped swing bay that is approximately 8 feet in height and 7. 6 feet in width, and comfort stations located inside of our “Tikki House” which have a ramp entrance and handicapped lavatory stalls. In our design, we also divided the playground into two thematic sections, “the calming area” and “the play area”. The calming area displays a passive landscape and includes fourteen benches, which are 6 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 18 inches in height, and eight hammocks which could be used by parents for relaxation. The play area is an active landscape that includes a 33 ft. by 3.6 ft. pirate ship, equipped with various interactive objects such as telescopes, merry-go rounds, a rope bridge, a “captain’s wheel”, and an octopus structure, whose tentacles serve as slides. The area also includes forty-eight foot swing area with three swing bays, for both school age and infant children, as well as a built –in trampoline nest that is constructed with underground spring coils and has a rubber protective barrier, so that it is safer for the use of kids from the ages of 0 to 6 years old. Lastly, we included a spray shower area for children to enjoy during the summer season.
Inspiration
A playground, just like any other place in a child’s life such as a home or school, can be the foundation of that child’s development. Therefore, when conceptualizing the theme for this project, we were inspired to pick themes that would both revitalize a devastated community and express the enjoyment of childhood. These themes were birds and pirates. Although, at first these themes may seem hard to combine, we realized that both birds and pirates are figures that represent migrating or traveling and exploring new areas, much like youth is filled with “discovering” or taking on new adventures. For example, the Sandpiper bird, which our site is named after migrates each winter to the North Temperate Zone after nesting in arctic regions. Birds also seemed fitting as our theme because they are colorful animals and various colors is what our team wanted to incorporate into the design of the playground in order to make our project more appealing to the young eye. A pirate theme, we felt could provide hope towards communities of a hurricane afflicted area, because pirates are usually depicted as people who “battle” through storms and dangerous environments in search of something positive, such as gold. In New York, aEssentially, because we in Team 8 are all teenagers ourselves who know the memorable experiences that a playground can have, we wanted to create a space for the 1,240 kids of ages 6 years old or under in the Rockaway Beach area to enjoy.
Description of Site
Our site, Sandpiper Playground, is located along Rockaway Beach Shore Front Parkway Rockaway Beach itself is a neighborhood located on the South Shore of Long Island in-between the neighborhoods of Arverne and Rockaway Park and is currently the largest urban beach in the United States Atlantic Coast , over 10, 000 residents of Rockaway Beach
