All Writing So Far

Handicapped Amenities

Our playground incorporates various handicapped amenities that provide accessibility and enjoyment to all disabled persons and meets Level 1 of the New York City Parks Department Accessibility Levels. 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 which have both a ramp entrance and handicapped lavatory stalls. The playground also includes five entrances, one of which connects to an undulating boardwalk that can be used for wheelchair access or simply enjoyment.

Code Requirements/ Playground Safety

While designing this playground, Team 8 referenced and abided to the codes and guidelines of the High Performance Landscape Guidelines/21st Century Parks For New York City for playgrounds. For example, by spacing each element of playground far enough apart, we provide opportunities for free play such as allowing children to run around. We also included a weather station and informational plaques for the vegetation and the telescopes on the pirate ship in order to provide educational opportunities for children. Team 8 used the Public Playground Safety Handbook provided by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to reference proper playground equipment in addition to the International Playground Equipment Manufacturers Association (IPEMA) and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).

Elements of Playground

In our design, we 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 a 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 and an undulating boardwalk which connects to the playground to be used by all patrons.

Inspiration for Theme

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. Essentially, 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, specifically on the Shore Front Parkway, an area that attracts many inter-borough and outer-borough residents year round. Until 2000, the playground was titled Beach 106 Playground. Yet, in 1999 a nearly $ 138,000 renovation of the playground was funded by the Mayor and Borough President at the time, causing Sandpiper Playground to be renamed after the sandpiper bird, which indigenous to the Rockaway area. 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. Also, as of 2010, the community has a population of 13,000 people. However, during Hurricane Sandy, a storm that developed into a category 3 hurricane once it hit the Atlantic Coast, over 10, 000 residents of Rockaway Beach were affected by the storm.

Storm Mitigation

While designing our project, we elevated our playground 4.6 feet above the  9 ft elevation grade above sea level of the platform, and made our comfort  stations an additional 4 feet above the 4.6 ft. elevation. This in turn, will help prevent storm surge which occurs when high winds cause the ocean water to pile up higher than the regular sea level during a storm.  We have added two preventative measures to prevent storms from destroying our playground again, a seawall which is 4 feet 6 inches and groynes which would be placed in the waters near the shoreline of our beach. The groynes will be evenly placed along the length of our playground and what they do is slow down the waves so that when they hit our seawall, which is also placed along the length of the playground, it wont damage it as much. We have also added anaconda wave generators along with with our groynes to harvest the waves natural Eco friendly energy. The anaconda wave generator works by having a wave sent through its 200 meter long tubing along with the kinetic energy that comes along with it. This device will be floating just under the surface of the sea to get as much energy possible from each wave. With this technology a single anaconda wave generator can create up to 1Mega Watt of energy, which would be enough energy to power up to 1000 homes, or in our case our playground.