It’s truly a sight to behold when kids are closely engaged with the natural world. Kids today don’t have the same opportunities I did as a child to be out in the real world, unsupervised and for hours on end, doing whatever we wanted outdoors (save for any obvious safety concerns). So, when I see kids climbing all over a biophilic play space that I designed as part of a museum of natural history, I’m fulfilling some of that magical potential of play that’s safe. Biophilic play spaces are both the mediums and the messages of the museum—the ways and the whys.
They’re the ways because they’re designed to keep kids safe in what is ultimately a messy, corporeal, and explorative experience. They’re the whys because they’re increasingly being seen as necessary for diversifying not only the types of experiences kids have with their contemporaries but also ways experiences and the game board can be navigated.
The adventure of nature-based play was rediscovered in my work when I designed a play area for children, and I based that design on my childhood experience. When I was a young child, a family outing took us to a reserve that was part of a state park in my home state. The park had no official playground but offered us abundant nature-based play. There were fallen logs to walk on, shimmery water in the rivers to hop over, and little hills that my brother and I scaled like they were mountains. It felt like survival training with the three of us—my brother, my sister, and me—as we traversed the park and played in it.
We had nothing but our imaginations and nature to keep us entertained, and we went home unscathed, if not a bit dirtier and scratchier than we might have been had we played in a conventional playground.
Case Study: Playgrounds That Inspire Curiosity
One playscape that captivates me is the Nature Discovery Playground at Discovery Green in Houston, Texas. This playground embodies biophilic design stretched across multiple dimensions of play. Natural materials like sand, water, and wooden logs compose the playscape and invite children to interact with the natural elements—the absence of which is often lamented in more sterile, urban playgrounds. The designers have purposely left room for the environment to “take over.” Natural processes—from rain creating puddles to trees growing and changing with the seasons—are a part of the play experience. When I think of this playground, I also reflect on how much more impactful such an environment is for a child’s development than a typical playground.
It not only fosters a sense of independence and self-directed play but also teaches lessons about nature and natural processes—all without a textbook.
Another important aspect of biophilic play spaces is their ability to evolve, just like nature. While our local ecosystems undergo daily, weekly, and seasonal changes, our static playgrounds remain, well, static. But there is no reason why a play space designed with biophilic principles should not be as engaging throughout the year as one that’s simply built to be fun. Recently, I had the chance to design a biophilic play area for a local school. Our idea was to make the space dynamic in ways that honored the four seasons. We planted a variety of native plants and put in a small pond that would draw in local wildlife.
The kids had a blast watching (and listening to) the evolution of the tadpoles, and the blooming patterns of our pond plants became an unexpected talking point and part of the curriculum.
The significance of using natural materials was dramatically illustrated for me during a project to create a biophilic play space in one of the most urbanized places imaginable. The space was fairly small, hemmed in by many tall structures, and the school had already sacrificed quite a bit of its footprint in the name of playgrounds and parkour. So, it was really a challenge to create the play experience that the architects did, and we didn’t think that we could go with anything that resembled the natural look and feel of playgrounds from yesteryear—anything made from trees.
Instead, we used the power of imagination, taking the children on a journey to the age of dinosaurs in our construction drawings. There’s an inside joke in the film “The Last Dinosaur” that’s told between two characters. One character asks, “What’s that sound?” The second character answers, “I think it’s the dinosaurs.”
One of the most beneficial aspects of a biophilic play space is its ability to make children adaptable. The natural world is already imbued with unpredictability, and a child playing in a natural play area can experience a whole new level of variation and nonlinearity that dwarfs what they might encounter on a conventional play structure. A metal slide or swing, after all, is man-made—not only is it designed for safety and uniformity, but it also exists as a discrete object, without the kind of enticements to exploration that a log, boulder, or tree offers. And these natural materials are fit for play because they’re not only safe in most any configuration, but also in just about any conditions.
The resilience of humans and nature alike is a foundational principle of my design philosophy. Play is abundant in push and pull; it often requires navigation of tension and balance. And what is resilience if not the capacity to withstand and bounce back from these sorts of challenges? Building and testing the capacity for resilience in children and in the natural environment is central to my work as a playground designer. My aim is to create play spaces that embrace the imperfect and the wild.
Nature-Inspired Play Spaces and Psychological Well-Being
It’s widely understood that our mental health improves with the proximity of plants. Several research studies indicate that simply being around greenery makes us less stressed, happier, and more focused. This is particularly true for children, who are now more immersed in screens than in any other time of human history. Biophilic play areas—situated even in urban spaces—give kids the chance to unplug and reconnect with the kind of nature that boosts human well-being.
One especially potent example comes from a project I helped with in an urban area that was very, very crowded. Our play space was right next to a busy road, and we (of course) worried about the noise. The school’s administrators weren’t very keen on the idea of a space that was literally next to a highway. We worked with the design to incorporate a green buffer that was very, very dense and planted with a lot of trees and shrubs. This not only absorbed traffic sounds but, to my mind, created a very serene and tranquil environment that was distinctly separate from the very loud and raucous environment right outside.
Promoting Social Engagement Through Biophilic Design
From what I have seen, play areas that incorporate biophilia do an amazing job of getting kids to interact socially. I see a strong connection between the kinds of things that happen in nature-based spaces and the types of interactions that get kids to work together and communicate. I also see a connection to the somewhat lesser degree of structure I would associate with nature-based playscapes. I love the way nature immersion and unstructured play combine to facilitate the kinds of interactions that lead to cooperative and collective creativity.
A nature-based play area I designed for a community park illustrates my vision quite well. Instead of installing conventional playground equipment, we made the center that serves as the focal point of the area a natural gathering space with elements you might find in nature, like rocks, logs, and a small water feature. It didn’t take long for children to start working together to build small dams in the stream—using rocks and sticks to divert the water. I really enjoyed watching kids who had just met work together to achieve their very simple, yet very impressive, goals.
I think this unstructured, cooperative play is a huge benefit to their social development.
Biophilic Design for Play Areas: Considerations and Implications for Young Children
Certainly! Biophilic design offers a lot of beneficial opportunities, but when creating play spaces, there are some top-of-mind safety concerns that must be addressed. Natural play structures can be great, but they also have certain risks. The risk of falls, for instance, is present with any kind of play structure—and I suspect that some people would argue that a tree with a wooden branch that’s been carved into a knotted shape is not any safer than a traditional play structure. However, I really like this idea of using natural materials to create play spaces. It can be done with a mind toward safety and with a style that merges the appearance of the play space with the surrounding landscape.
Another vital facet is upkeep. Nature-inspired play spaces necessitate just as much attention and effort as a typical public park might. Just like a public park, play area living features call for watering during dry spells, and plant materials need attention if the wind and rain have transformed their looks. I often advise clients to think through the whole setup and offering before proceeding with the installation. In just a few cases, I’ve even backed up and rethought the planning process. A big part of that conversation has to do with long-term maintenance.
Future Plans: Expanding Biophilic Design to Educational Facilities
As I envision the future of biophilic play design, it seems to me that it will be directed chiefly along two paths: one involving scaling up what we’ve done at the Henry Barnard School and the other at Fairmount Elementary, and the other radically rethinking these biophilic principles across an entire school campus or public space. When I think about completely integrating biophilia into a school, I imagine not just play areas that are nature based, but classrooms, walkways, and even the seating areas and pathways around a given campus, all of it integrated, all of it imbued with biophilia.
I recently collaborated on a project that sought to achieve this aim. We created an outdoor classroom that also served as a play area. It had seating formed from large tree trunks, a small pond that could serve as a centerpiece for science lessons, and raised garden beds where the children could grow plants for their own biology experiments. The children used the space for sorts of activities even I would have thought impossible a few years ago, like free-camping in the wild with two-man tents, or painting the pond with the kind of abstract art that makes liberal use of the color blue.
And all this with a teacher who, let’s say, is not the kind of person you would ever want to cross.
In Closing
Biophilic playgrounds offer children something that the contemporary world often lacks—a chance to experience unstructured time in nature and to utilize their imaginations in ways that a standard playground does not allow. These playgrounds encourage exploration, risk-taking, and collaboration, all of which help foster a sincere bond to the natural world that we, as adults, often assume only happens in the wild. As a child, I spent many hours constructing forts, pretending in the land of make-believe, and just being in nature. My hope is that more communities will recognize the value of biophilic playgrounds in helping not only the imagination but also the physical and emotional health of children grow.
I will run the code block now and shall thus display ‘complete’ prior to embarking on the next section.
Creating for Every Age Group: Biophilic Play’s Benefits for Intergenerational Design
The biophilic design of children’s play areas is one of the most exhilarating developments in contemporary playgrounds. And I’m not saying that just because I run a design office that dreams up spaces for the enjoyment of kids And their families. The very core of this concept is that it brings the natural world into play spaces in a way that pleases not just the little ones but also the big ones who are accompanying them. Indeed, biophilic communities may even have a slight edge on their rivals when it comes to building communes between grandchildren and grandparents.
I remember a play area we designed in a community park that became a go-to spot for children and their families. The space had a very mild incline—a hill that kids could run up and down and around without restraint. But it also had quiet corners with benches nestled among plantings for the adults to sit and relax. From that vantage point, the adults could see the play happening, but they were far enough away that the kids felt like they were in their own world without any grown-up supervision. And, sometimes, the adults could hear from a distance that the kids were playing in a way that made it seem like they were having way more fun than the grown-ups were having.
Interacting between generations is something I care deeply about. It means a lot to me to watch a child learn to climb a tree with the prompt of a parent. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen a child scale a boulder or ascend a gnarled tree trunk, and each time I’ve marveled at the way these incredible, biophilic spaces enable the kind of transmittal of not just courage and the force of the will to overcome fear but also the simple passing on of the names and identities of trees, rocks, and vines—an ecology lesson, an English lesson, and a life lesson all rolled into one.
My Own Reflection: Rethinking Play Through a Biophilic Perspective
My own childhood experiences, I believe, hold the key to understanding what I want to accomplish with biophilic play areas. I spent hours in my backyard, making magic with just a few rocks and sticks. These were the best kinds of play—unstructured, imaginative, and natural. There were no rules or instructions, just endless possibilities. It’s this spirit of open-ended, nature-based play that I want to infuse into biophilic playscapes and nature climbing walls.
Visiting a biophilic playground long after its construction, I’m often amazed at how much it has changed. After all, nature is always in flux. Trees grow and die, the patterns of sunlight and shadow shift through the seasons, and some of the plants in the play area inexplicably (and sometimes uncomfortably) fill in or die back, or just sit there, looking stiff and silly, a year or two after they’ve opened. Still, through all of this, there is one aspect of the biophilic playground that I have seen hold steady in the half-dozen or so times I’ve visited them.
And that is the way that children interact with the play space—wayfinding and working around the flaws and failures of the piece as they go.
In an ever-more disconnected-from-nature world, biophilic play areas are at once a call-back to an untamed childhood and a desperately needed bridge back to nature. They offer children a place to push their physical limits, expand their creative horizons, and—most importantly, I think—cement a love for the living world around them. The places we make today, after all, have a real say in what kind of people tomorrow will be allowed to physically, emotionally, and creatively inhabit the same common spaces we’re allowed access to.
To Conclude: Fostering Lasting Links to the Natural World
Biophilic play areas are not merely play spaces; they are learning ecosystems. Bringing nature into children’s daily play creates environments that are so much more than what we traditionally define as “play.” Play is such a vital and essential part of any child’s life and development that we cannot afford for its associated spaces to be anything less than meaningful, connected to nature, and loaded with possibilities of enriching and engaging a child on many levels.
I have personally seen the deep effect that these areas can have on children and their communities. Biophilic design—comprehensively taking natural elements and the experience of nature into account—can dramatically reduce stress and enhance concentration. It can also drive physical development, and, most importantly, promote cooperation among children. Biophilic design allows children to experience the benefits of nature and a natural environment, which is crucial for their development. Because of many of these same elements, biophilic design also benefits the communities that surround these areas.
As we gaze into the future, I hold that the tenets of biophilic design will be of ever-growing significance in directing our thoughts about play spaces. They have the potential to work as a kind of guide or compass—something to keep our design decisions pointed in the right direction. Following the lead of biophilic design means embracing nature in all its beauty and unpredictability, something we know to be deeply healthful and beneficial.
Integrating Water Features into Biophilic Play Areas Water is one of the most alluring aspects of biophilic play spaces. Of all the natural elements one might introduce to a play environment, water is perhaps the most powerful in its ability to attract and sustain a child’s interest. Having worked on biophilic play space designs that incorporate natural water features, I can confidently say they my top recommendation if someone asked me the best way to engage a child’s interest in their play space. This applies whether the water feature is an active element that the child can control, such as a water pump, or a more passive feature like a pond that might house turtles or fish.
I recall being involved in a project where we included a diminutive aquatic zone in a community park. We conceived a system of shallow rivulets and little ponds where children could, with rocks and sticks, alter the current of the water. They became little engineers, creating dams and other “structures” to see how the water would behave if they redirected it. The small play zone had two main bodies of water, and each one drew quite a crowd of children, who were mostly oblivious to the other play structures in the park. “Look what I made!” was kind of the informal motto of the water play experience.
And what was so cool about it was that the kids were using the water as a communal experience.
What mesmerizes me about aquatic features is their potential to instil in children a deeper understanding of delicate ecosystems. Take, for example, the park where we installed a stream and pond. We planted a selection of native, water-tolerant plants around the edges of the stream and pond. Immediately, children started to notice all the inhabitants of our newly formed “ecosystem.” They pointed out frogs, tadpoles, and dragonflies. I consider these kinds of water features to be the ultimate hands-on learning tool.
Story: How H2O Changed an Urban Play Space I had the chance to convert a neglected, dual-use city-owned parcel that housed a playground and basketball court into a nature-centered space. The district partnered with the non-profit Trust for Public Land to effect this transformation. The playground and basketball court functioned as a concrete desert—heat-radiating, shade-free, and dry. The Trust for Public Land’s design and build teams had to give it some life and find a way to get the children and families using the space to interact with some natural elements. Water was the answer.
The playground rapidly transformed into a center of action. Youth who had earlier shown no interest in the area began to dedicate themselves to it, putting in hours of labor there. They experimented with the water, moving stones around, and constructing vessels that they floated on the water. Their parents told us that the kids were coming home soaked and muddy but happier than they’d ever seen them. It was like we’d discovered a new island of play in our adventure playground, and the kids were the first explorers of it.
Introducing water into a play space encourages physical and imaginative types of play. Children use it to create, as they do with other natural materials, a variety of imaginative scenarios. They engage in quite a bit of nonverbal communication with their peers while they play with water. The kinds of critical thinking that are required to use water safely and to good effect seem, to me, to be beyond the capacities of very young children when they are unsupervised. Hearing (or in my case, imagining) the sounds of children playing near water makes me feel good, as if the world is righting itself in some small way.
My thoughts and designs for biophilic playgrounds are ever-evolving; I see my work as a collaborative process much like the growth and transformation of a child. I hope to create both play and learning environments that adapt to the nature of the child, the child’s community, and the season in which the child plays. I aim to design spaces that encompass the child’s existing and future capacity for exploration, creative problem solving, and the pure joy of being in a built or natural environment that they can immerse themselves in.
Biophilic play spaces have an allure that is all their own. They tend to be alluringly simple, with elegant forms that invite you to imagine what might happen if you interacted with them. Play spaces designed under the tenets of biophilic design don’t dictate actions, like most contemporary commercial play spaces do. Instead, they say, “Come play in me. In whatever way you see fit.” And of course, they have a way of evoking the natural world that not only makes them interesting to children—if not in their own right, then certainly by virtue of their parents being interested in them—but also makes them fundamentally interesting to those of us who are lucky enough to be adults.
