Spruce Playground

Boston, Massachusetts

The school tasked the landscape architecture firm with transforming an underutilized, 1,500 square foot lot in front of the school’s entrance, into a safe and vibrant haven for the nursery school students. Even in this minimal square footage, the firm aimed to design a space that would engage the children in many types of play: active, sensory, creative, imaginative, social, and reflective. Key to this process was a thoroughly integrated design collaboration between the landscape architect, the school, a local artist, and the contractor.

The outside of the unique, artistic wood fence sparks interest and intrigue; its carved and stained slats depict the skyline of a mysterious city and green forest beyond. From the inside, the enclosure helps one feel safe, and protected. Occasional small openings allow children to look out and surprise passers-by. The entirety of the playground’s paving is permeable, poured-in-place rubber with a colorful custom design featuring flowers, clouds, mounds, and woodlands. The ground surface pattern designates different play areas and links them via harmonious, closed loop path. Along the path, the children can create a variety of experiences.

The two green play mounds center the project, extruding upwards from the bevy of ground color, like islands in the sea. Designed for a multitude of active play types, the mounds drive the overall flow of the space. The larger mound, ten feet in diameter, has a tunnel made from reclaimed concrete pipe running through it, to be used as a hideout or a shortcut. Organically sprinkled across the site are black locust logs of different shapes and sizes, clustered in response to the graphic ground plane. These are used in a variety of ways: as stepping logs, a balance beam, the border of the sand pit and stools.  The natural wood element gives a warm, comforting character to the space and provides a contrast to the rubber play surface.

LOCATION
Boston, MA

SIZE
1,500 sqf

YEAR
2021