The Playgrounds Issue of Landscape Architect and Specifier News saw many firms submit their projects for feature consideration. Among several great projects, we at LandscapeArchitect.com thought Heckscher Park Playground deserved to be showcased online.

Heckscher Park is a local park and national historic district in Huntington, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. The eighteen (18) acre park is roughly triangular-shaped with a large pond on its northwest corner. It contains the Heckscher Museum of Art, established by industrialist August Heckscher, as well as the Chapin Rainbow Theater, and a newly designed 15,000 sq. ft. playground area for kids of all ages and abilities to enjoy.

In the late winter/early spring the municipality broke ground, bringing to reality what once seemed like a dream for the Sheryl Steinberg Collins Foundation. They donated much of the money to make this dream come true, a new bright, beautiful and safe, ADA compliant playground space for children of all abilities to enjoy. Orange was selected as the main theme by Mr. Steinberg in honor of his late wife and surviving daughter as it was their favorite color.

 
The existing playground area sits on a recessed, compacted stone base allowing the play tiles to sit flush with the existing stamped concrete walkways. This flush reveal allows all the playground areas to be entirely ADA compliant, thus allowing wheelchair access anywhere along the playground's perimeters. Additionally, a newly designed Fabric/Mesh Sandwich System was installed between the compacted stone base and play tiles to provide plenty of drainage, while at the same time maintaining long term stability in the sub base. This "sandwich system" has a plastic grid inside the fabric, providing very high compressive strengths and a multi-directional flow design for a continuous path of water discharge.

Unity's rectangle play tiles were selected by the municipality to replace the ailing Pour-In-Place (PIP) that once surfaced the playground for several reasons: 1.) They favored the idea of using our "Step and Repeat" Method of Installations over traditional 2x2 tiles systems that are on the market, to truly lock in the tiles by lining real seams up with fake seams. 2.) Tests have shown that Unity's new "Skin-Top" tiles have outperformed traditional EPDM top tiles 2-1, Pigmented tiles 3-1, and PIP systems 4-1. A true testament to a playground that will get over 1,000 visitors every week.

Unity Surfacing met with the town several times during the planning stages to discuss colors and blends that would accentuate the play equipment. Unity, along with town board officials and community members, decided to select a light color tile for the field area, due to sun exposure most of the day. With that, a light grey color was selected as the base, with a small mixture of orange and green (known as lime-green) to be included in the blend along with a hint of black to hide the dirt and scuff marks. The end result was a mixture that was: 75% light grey, 10% orange, 10% lime green and 5% black.

After showing this blend to the town board and community members, several people asked about a "pop" color to be included into the design, so the safety surfacing wouldn't me so monotonous. After careful consideration, we added a "mostly orange blend" in a "half-tile" format (also at the request of the town board and community members), to be added sporadically within the playground area in an effort to dress up the flooring. This blended included a 2nd color of Orange known as "Orange Melon". This blend was finalized as 35% Orange, 30% Melon, 35% Lime Green and 10% Black.

Once the playground was successfully completed, Unity had the safety surface tested for G-max and HIC ratings. Having the new Fabric/Mesh Sandwich System installed under the play tiles, we received favorable test results that were ~20% better than the former method of installing tiles over compacted stone. We feel this new technology will revolutionize the way safety surfacing is installed over compacted stone sub-base conditions in an effort to help with storm-water management issues.

To see more Playgrounds projects, go to https://landscapearchitect.com/landscape-articles/lasns-playgrounds-issue-34717#article1
To have your project featured in LASN or on LandscapeArchitect.com please email editorial@landscapearchitect.com
For more information about submitting a project, go to: https://landscapearchitect.com/research/editorial/editorial-submissions.php