Burling Slip
Imagination Playground Axonometric
Burling Slip
Interior View Looking Towards Pier 17
Burling Slip
Interior View Looking Towards City
Burling Slip
Loose Parts Play in Open Area
Brownsville
Imagination Playground in a BOX - Sand, Water, Loose Parts play
Big BOX
Imagination Playground in a Big BOX - Sand, Water, Loose Parts play
Imagination Playground Initiative
Imagination Playground is the product of over five years of Rockwell Group’s extensive research on play and playgrounds. It is a progressive concept in children’s play that offers a rich environment of diverse materials that encourages unstructured, child-directed “free play.” It has three key components to achieve this: an environment that children can physically manipulate; a huge array of “loose parts,” which are essentially non-fixed play equipment; and Play Associates, trained staff who manage the play space and maintain the “loose parts.”
Imagination Playground at Burling Slip
After developing the Imagination Playground concept, Rockwell Group approached the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, which collaborated to realize this new play space at Burling Slip in lower Manhattan. In addition to gifting the playground design to New York City, Rockwell Group has raised an endowment fund to ensure that Imagination Playground is properly maintained for decades to come. The playground is scheduled to open in late summer 2010.
Imagination Playground in a BOX
Rockwell Group and KaBOOM!, the nation’s leading not-for-profit dedicated to bringing play back into the lives of children, have partnered to implement a new generation of playspaces across the United States based on the concepts introduced by Imagination Playground at Burling Slip. Imagination Playground in a BOX makes the principles of unstructured free play accessible to any community across the country. This semi-mobile kit features an array of “loose parts” adaptable to many different site conditions, such as parks, childcare environments and schools. With support from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Imagination Playground in a BOX launched at Brooklyn’s Brownsville Playground in Summer 2008. In Summer 2009, BOXes will be available in eight locations in New York City KaBOOM! is also piloting Imagination Playground in a BOX at four sites in Miami, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans. To learn more, please go to www.kaboom.org/imaginationplayground.
