5 Unique Design Ideas for Your Public Playground

 Public playgrounds help to make families and neighbourhoods stronger. They provide communities with functional and attractive outdoor locations where children can meet and interact whilst learning vital cognitive, motor and social skills. Well-designed playgrounds offer resources that help to build skills and foster good habits. When visited frequently by families, they can assist with physical health, wellbeing and relationship building.

Modern playground design ideas favour inclusive spaces that offer opportunities for play regardless of children’s ages and abilities. Here at adventure+, we specialise in providing safe, thoughtful, innovative playground designs to public spaces across Australia. Below, we offer some tips on how to incorporate unique and engaging features for your local community’s public playground.

General Design Tips for Outdoor Play Areas

Focus on creating versatile play areas that incorporate different types of play for different age groups. A well-designed playground that serves the community is:

• Engaging – Play equipment should be fun and challenging for children, encouraging them to strengthen and stimulate their mind. If children play for a long time and want to come back, it’s a good sign.
  
• Safe – A playground designer who understands how to meet Australian safety compliance standards and guidelines is essential for ensuring children are safe while playing.
  
• Traffic and Layout – Good playground design is user friendly and manages the flow of traffic nicely to facilitate fun play when it’s busy without the risk of injury or overstimulation.
  
• Aesthetics – Playgrounds should be visually attractive with a design that feels exciting and adventurous to children.
  
• Supervision – The layout of play equipment should also facilitate easy adult supervision from a comfortable distance.

Unique Design

At adventure+, we have any years of experience in playground design and manufacture enables us to provide specialist advice and innovative solutions for your project.  You have the assurance of dealing with a company that is long established and proven in the playground field. We aim to constantly innovate our designs and incorporate modern design trends and ideas, including:

1. Nature Themes

Bright plastic play equipment may have its place, however, incorporating materials that complement the natural environment is becoming increasingly popular in public playgrounds. For example, cypress wood structures look great in tree-lined public parks. See our Mitchells Run Estate project for an example of how to incorporate natural timber structures in a unique way.

2. Imaginative Play Themes

Themed playgrounds can create the seeds from which thousands of childhood adventures spring. Whether your theme is a princess castle, or a ship on the high seas, make elements of your play unit part of a quest you must travel before you get to your final destination (the tower). An overarching theme will give your playground a wow factor that will differentiate it from other playgrounds in the area. For example, our Grange Reserve project incorporates an exciting Rocketship design.

3. Sensory Elements

Kids love to explore the world through their senses. This makes incorporating sensory play a great approach to playground design. Activate all 5 senses with a variety of play elements and different materials like wood, plastic, metal, sand and mulch. Brightly coloured, contrasting objects, play equipment with moving components and objects that produce unique sounds all add to an engaging play experience.

4. Add Verticality

Raising the design from ground level is a great way to make playgrounds more exciting and eye-catching. Going higher also enables you to create more play areas out of a relatively small space. For example, the Elford Green Reserve project features two towing platforms connected by a rope bridge. Through its height, it manages to incorporate over 15 different play components including 3 slides in a relatively small play space, while catering to different age groups.

5. Use the Environment

It’s important that a playground in a public space isn’t an eyesore for the community. A design that compliments and seamlessly integrates surrounding trees, landscaping and topographical features. In the Dendy Park project, a slide was incorporated into a hill while logs were used for steps, creating a unique and whimsical space.

Explore Our Innovative Playground Designs

Let adventure+ help you with designing a playground project for your local community in Australia. Explore our playground design process for more inspiration. Contact us online or on 1300 237 587 to enquire about interactive and innovative playground design and ideas for playground equipment.