Watching the way children used his equipment, often in ways he could never have anticipated, made him more and more certain: play wasn’t a frivolous distraction from learning, but something essential to childhood and indeed humanity. [...] According to his design philosophy, each park wasn’t just a place to jump on a shockingly large air mattress. It was “a place where a child can ask questions of what it means to be human.” — The Local
Journalist Nicholas Hune-Brown profiles Canadian designer Eric McMillan, who started out his career as an exhibition designer and was then thrown into the spotlight after he designed the Ontario Place Children's Village in Toronto. Suddenly becoming the expert on children's design, McMillan incorporated elements that aimed to help kids learn through play — which includes helping create the world's first ball pit.
In the piece, McMillan looks back on those years — from the thought process behind the iconic Toronto playground, to how changing attitudes towards playgrounds led to the end of those glory years, to what he thinks should be done with the now-defunct site.
“The key was to build things that sparked interaction, between kids and the equipment, but especially between the kids themselves,” Hune-Brown writes in the piece.
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