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North Transfer Playground, Seattle, Washington Rachel Dotson, HBB Landscape Architecture 
The new North Transfer and Recycling Station in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood is a state of the art public facility that collects and processes the city's food and yard waste, garbage, and recycling. Seattle Public Utilities set out to build a sustainable facility that not only minimizes environmental impacts in a highly urbanizing and residential area, but also provides a public amenity for the neighboring residences and businesses.  The new playground is located on what was once a steeply sloping, one-third acre, asphalt parking lot. While built on a small site, the playground's recreational value extends far beyond its two main play structures. Every site feature was considered as an opportunity to maximize play, including the existing slopes and new retaining walls. Its grades and site accessibility were closely considered during the design and resulted in an accessible permeable concrete paver pathway that meanders through the playground and comfortably brings visitors though the 13 foot elevation change. Starting at the upper playground entrance, it leads to each different play pod and eventually connects to the Woodlawn Open Space across the street. The design began with a community based, public process to help determine overall goals for the site design and to explore different design concepts. The community was especially excited to incorporate natural play elements into the topography of the playground. This led to a playground design inspired by Pacific Northwest forest elements, such as tree houses, logs, and climbing activities.  The site has two lawn areas: one open for unstructured play and the other with strategically placed logs and boulders to naturally extend the play space. The upper terrace is home to a 17-foot tall climbing net that provides views of the park, Queen Anne Hill, and downtown Seattle. The lower terrace hosts a tree house inspired play structure. The two are connected by a custom log stepper wall designed for various levels of climbing ability, improvised play, and informal seating. The log stepper wall was sculpted by ID Sculpture and matches the aesthetic set by the tree house play structure. Two accessible overlooks are built into the wall, each surrounded by a custom guardrail inspired by the tree house theme. One overlook includes two periscopes that peek out over the park and playground, and the other overlook integrates a talk tube that is connected to the tree house play structure.  A variety of picnic tables, benches, and low retaining walls are integrated throughout the playground and offer visitors plenty of space for seating and gathering. Ornamental deciduous and evergreen trees help provide shade to the seating areas and integrate seasonal interest. Native plantings, including ferns, azaleas, and fountain grasses, have grown in and mimic a Pacific Northwest forest around the playground, helping the site to meet LEED® Gold certification and achieve a Seattle Green Factor score of 0.4. Taken as a whole, the playground is a great example of how small spaces and challenging sites can integrate innovation and extend play opportunities for kids of all ages and abilities.  Comment Form is loading comments...
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