Fayerweather Street School Playscape
Active play, quiet retreats, and multi-age play experiences create opportunities for children to collaborate, imagine, and grow together.The new play space, designed by our Landscape Architecture team, offers a wide range of play opportunities for the Fayerweather Street School community, which includes children ages 3 to 14. As part of the renovation process, our team held design workshops with teachers, students, and parents to help shape the new play environment. The community set clear goals for the playground:
Be physically challenging and promote healthy risk-taking;
Encourage cooperative and multi-age play;
Provide cozy spaces that encourage creative and dramatic play.
Client
Fayerweather Street School
Location
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Services
Landscape Architecture and Stakeholder Engagement
Size
20,300 sq ft
Designing for Challenge and CooperationThe selection and design of the play elements reflect these guiding principles. A spinning net offers varying levels of interaction, allowing children to help spin it from the ground, sit on a lower rung, or climb to higher spots on the net. A custom-designed giant slide, measuring 20 feet long and 10 feet high, can accommodate six to eight children at once, providing a physically challenging experience while fostering cooperative, multi-age play.
Supporting Different Ways to PlayQuiet areas along the perimeter of the play space provide cozy settings for small-group activities, creative and dramatic play, exploration, and investigation while fostering connections to nature at the school.
The design has inspired students to use their imaginations, creating new games and ways to play. The playground has become a valuable asset to the school and a major draw for the community, continuing to reflect and support the goals and spirit of the Fayerweather Street School.
