Circular and sustainable playground equipment

This project is focused on the development of circular and sustainable playground equipment (PE), as the Netherlands and its municipalities have set targets to become a Circular Economy in 2050. Furthermore, the PE should also encourage children to play outside more and engage in physical exercise. The reason for this being that children in the...

Play-infused innovation: A playful design to enlarge innovative capacity at VONK

Purpose - In my Master Thesis titled "Shaping an innovative play space," I was inspired by the realm of playground design, particularly the concept of 'adventure playgrounds' and their profound influence on creativity. I embarked on this journey to harness the power of play and apply it to the office context of VONK, the innovation center of the...

Social connectedness at the playground before and after COVID-19 school closure

Social connectedness at school is crucial to children's development, yet very little is known about the way it has been affected by school closures during COVID-19 pandemic. We compared pre-post lockdown levels of social connectedness at a school playground in forty-three primary school-aged children, using wearable sensors, observations,...

The impact of loose-parts-play on schoolyard social participation of children with and without disabilities: A case study

Background: Outdoor social participation in the school playground is crucial for children's socio-emotional and cognitive development. Yet, many children with disabilities in mainstream educational settings are not socially included within their peer group. We examined whether loose-parts-play (LPP), a common and cost-effective intervention...

The ongoing monument: An outdoor theatre for Belgrade

Project Play: An exploration of how to combine architecture and play

Everything started with my fascination of Pokémon-Go; the cultural moment when the building environment was used differently than intended; massive groups gathered around in public parks and kids invading your backyard. I wanted to understand the behavior of people and the new ways of interaction between space and humans. Literature research...

A Playground for Skopje: A Tension Between Freedom and Constraints

The graduation project is a playground in and around the former Post Office of Skopje which is composed of three main elements. Firstly, the terrain of the complex is divided into four main fields, which vary from their immediate surroundings towards the city. Furthermore, the element of the bridge, which grows with its tentacles into these...

Privacy preserving detection and classification of playground users

Large cities in the Netherlands, like Rotterdam, have hundreds of playgrounds, but local governments have little information on how children and adults use them. Usage data can help create playgrounds that better fit with the residents' needs by identifying what elements of a playground are the most popular, and which do not get used. The AMS...

Exploring design guidelines for fostering citizen engagement through information sharing: Local playgrounds in The Hague

Citizens’ engagement in their neighbourhood community is pivotal for cities to effectively deal with future transitions. Knowing what is going on and having access to the neighbourhood network are important conditions for this. Although prior research has studied ways to foster information sharing between citizens, the underlying assumptions and...

Exploring Requirements for Joint Information Sharing in Neighbourhoods: Local Playgrounds in The Hague

Resilient communities are an important prerequisite to reach urban resilience. In such communities, citizens need to be able to participate for improving liveability and safety of their environment. The playable city, where participation is key, provides the environment for this process to unfold. This paper researches requirements for the...

2.5D Playgrounds for Bogota: Stimulate Playful Actions in Public Spaces by Redesigning Ground Surfaces into 2.5D Architectural Compositions

How to construct the commons with the power of play? How to reactivate leftover public spaces in central Bogota by architectural interventions that stimulate playful actions? <br/><br/>I shift my focus from buildings to the ground surfaces, and redesign them into a constellation of “2.5D architectural composition”. “2.5D” refers to an abstract...

Google Europe Campus: A working - living innovation district

This is a complex project focused on combing a working and living environment for the employees of a tech company located in Amsterdam at the former Apple Market. The design redevelops an existing, underutilized parking garage and the adjacent waterfront to create an innovation district integrated within the urban fabric, with special attention...

South Works Playful Learning Environment

The design combines 2 programs with the main idea of PLAY which is connecting them: Learning through PLAY and Recreation through PLAY. This programmatic combination of learning and recreation addresses the low educational level and the demographic homogeneity of the South Chicago neighborhood as well as deals with the reduced quality of life...

Bengels: Multi-sensory playground equipment for active play

This graduation report shows the design process followed during designing new playground equipment for Boer Speeltoestellen in Nieuwendijk. The assignment for this project was: Develop a new product for outdoor playground equipment for the Dutch sub-urban environment, that interacts on a multi-sensory level with both boys and girls in the age of...

Interactive Waterplay

The design and engineering of two interactive waterplay elements for Van Egdom B.V. One being a ring which can be retrofitted to current water playground structures, and the other being one of the products from a range of pneumatic atomized water play elements.