Earthartist creates beautiful, fun and innovative natural playgrounds, creative playscapes and outdoor classrooms. Explore a sample of our previous projects and contact us to discover what we can envision for you.
Child Care Playgrounds
A diverse childcare playground including art centres, planting zones, natural sand play areas and music playground..
Key Challenge: integrating a diverse play offering into a site completely finished with artificial turf.
Best Feature: a comprehensive musical playground including a walk through bamboo windchime, a full size harp, tambourines, gongs, xylophone, bass drum, cymbals, and hand chimes.
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A climbing wall and integrated a natural saw mill-slab fence to help create a sense of place and a natural feel that also provided security and screening of unpleasing views.
Key challenge: providing a balance between on-site parking, access and accommodating two separate age groups in a small urban site.
Best feature: Playhouses built using custom built and painted shipping skids that could be moved and organised by the children
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The visitation playground required the accommodation of a wide range of users including children with a range of emotional and physical challenges, several users types and conflicting activities within a very small area.
Key challenge: High public visibility of the play area located at the front of the building just meters from a busy arterial road.
Best Feature: Broad range and diversity of play experiences in a very small footprint.
9 Photos
The visitation playground site in Elora was highly constricted and the budget was limited, requiring reuse of an existing concrete pad and of thirteen existing armour stone boulders.
Key Challenge:South west exposure and the need for shade and the creation of a space that feels welcoming and respectful.
Best Feature: Development of flexible programming and a site design that permits the space to be used for a combination of both active and passive activities.
13 Photos
School Playscapes
This stunning outdoor classroom helps integrate the natural environment into the realm of play and learning and reinforce the reputation of Havergal as an exemplary teaching and learning institution.
Key challenge: Integration of built form within a diverse forest ecosystem.
Best Feature: Learning area set into the natural topography of the valley wall with direct access to the riparian ecosystems.
12 Photos
Design featured a grass maze transitioning into a mini labyrinth of flexible surface mount delineators, a wood playhouse, planter box for cultivation, painted games and a creative play sandbox with boulders.
Key challenge: Creating a dynamic range of play opportunities within a small space.
Best Feature: Flexible surface mount delineators turned out to be a favorite with the kids.
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With extremely limited resources, this cost-effective design solution satisfies the need for active play and social interaction. This recycled tire playground provides a complex range of play opportunities.
Key challenge: Significant budget and time constraints – the entire project needed to be completed over several months and under $20,000
Best Feature: The diversity and range of play opportunities within a relatively simple and inexpensive installation
15 Photos
Junior School Natural Playground
This ambitious playground project provided an exceptional opportunity to leverage the remarkable natural environment of the school topography to create a one-of-a-kind teaching and learning environment
Key challenge: Led a multidisciplinary team to navigate the complex approval process for completing works in stream and to execute a complex grading and naturalisation plan.
Best Feature: The labyrinth play area which included a navigational sundial feature.
15 Photos
This recycled tire playground provides a complex range of play opportunities with an emphasis on upper body gross motor play, balance and social play.
Key challenge: Creation of a playscape which can be used by all ages within a small footprint.
Best Feature: The diversity and range of play opportunities within a relatively simple and inexpensive installation
8 Photos
Following the Reggio Emilia approach to early education, this salamander shaped sand play area features rolling topography and natural beach sand within a compact playscape that offer children opportunities to be social, and provides endless creative and sensory opportunities.
Key challenge: Creating a wide range of play opportunities in a small space with significant budget restraints
Best Feature: Bunker style sand play area creating multiple play zones to facilitate a wide range of users and small groups of children.
11 Photos
Community Parks
Spiral mountain leads to the stone tower where you can look out over the entire park. The abstract wooden climbing sculpture gets harder and harder to climb the further you go.
Key challenge: integrating a wide variety of play opportunities in a relatively small space and limited budget.
Best feature: The stone tower was built in collaboration with the Willow Bank School of Restoration.
12 Photos
Graffiti walls and a bicycle pump track encourage creativity, promote youth engagement, and prevent vandalism.
Key challenge: Development of inclusive and robust play opportunities in community housing projects struggling with challenging social issues.
Best Feature: Re-purposing existing facilities to create new play opportunities; development of a bicycle pump track utilising local skills and manpower.
18 Photos
Master-Planning Playgrounds
Enter the sand play area through the remains of an ancient stone arch. Upon reaching the tower, ring the solitary carillon - or descend into the subterranean passageway and beat the central drum.
Key challenge: All ages playground to be designed within a limited construction budget and small 10x20m space.
Best Feature: Themed playground interpreting “the hero’s journey” articulated using an interplay of opposites in materials and topography.
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A simple design with complex range of play and learning opportunities. The topography surrounding the adventure playground based upon the Metatron cube, or “Flower of Life” while the central play area features materials that children can move, manipulate and control.
Key challenge: Providing a play area for a large number of children with a limited construction budget.
Best Feature: Children can carry, combine, redesign, line up, take apart, and put loose parts back together in almost endless ways.
12 Photos
Natural playground master plan featuring a “Three Ring” themed layout with historical references to Signor Farini (a local resident and famous circus promoter)
Key challenge: Very challenging site drainage and the integration of “gifts-in-kind” from fundraising activities into the design and proposed work plan.
Best Feature: Thematic portrayal of community history interpreted through playground design and play features.
11 Photos
The KOLTS parent committee together with earthartist Planning and Design embarked upon a playground revitalization process to create an outdoor play environment that would actively engage children, physically, intellectually and creatively.
Key challenge: Integration of play facilities to augment a progressive early childhood research and teaching curriculum.
Best Feature: Outstanding consultation process with staff, faculty and students to create a one of a kind resource for educators and researchers of early childhood education.
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Research
Young Children’s Relationship with Nature: Its Importance to Children’s Development & the Earth’s Future
Children’s Outdoor Play & Learning Environments: Returning to Nature
The Effects of traditional Playground equipment Design in Children’s Developmental Needs