Johnson+Southerland worked with a Seattle public alternative school, Salmon Bay K-8, to redesign their playground, to make it a better place for kids in the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) program, as well as making it better for all kids at the school and in the neighborhood. It is not an autism-only playground, but a playground designed for a large, urban, K-8 public school with multiple objectives and a very tight budget.

We would design it differently in a different setting, but the principles we developed around making it inclusive for kids with ASD may be applicable in a wide variety of settings.

ASD and the Playground
There are playground standards for accommodating physical disabilities, especially wheelchair accessibility, but when we set out to design Salmon Bay playground we could not find precedents or guidelines for autistic kids or children with other neurological disorders. We consulted with parents of kids with ASD, experts in the field and the school's special education teachers.

Many people formed impressions of autism from the 1988 movie Rainman. Dustin Hoffman plays an autistic savant who performs amazing feats of mathematics and memorization, but can't take care of himself or tolerate a hug from his brother. ASD, however, is a whole range of brain disorders that affect social interaction, communication and imagination, and may play out as obsessive and repetitive behaviors. The Centers for Disease Control estimates about 1 in 68 children have some form of ASD. The term "spectrum" indicates a wide range of effects. People at the lower-functioning end of the spectrum may be unable to break out of their own world, may never learn to speak or take care of themselves. Those at the higher-functioning end, sometimes diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, can lead independent and highly successful lives, while still being awkward in social interactions.

The designers appreciate that playgrounds aren't just about physical endeavors, but socializing. The kids spend a lot of time in small groups discussing kid stuff on the cushioned, colorful surfacing. Other can be seen crawling about on it.

Daniel Tammet, author of Born on a Blue Day, is at the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum and also a mathematics and language savant. His book is a treasure trove of playground memories that provided us insights. ASD children are easily over stimulated by sounds, activity and visual stimuli and need calming. Calming can include soothing or repetitious sounds or visuals, swinging, spinning and rocking, engaging with familiar textures, counting, walking familiar routes and contact with nature. Many ASD kids like to calm themselves in quiet, restful spaces or tight enclosed spaces. Still, these children are all different! Something that calms one might scare another, so variety is important.

Many ASD kids have poor coordination and proprioception (perception of body movement). These kids need activities that let them feel what their large muscles are doing, such as pushing, pulling, climbing and lifting. They can get frightened or stuck on a challenging play structure, so you want appropriate challenges for coordination, but you also want alternative ways down or out from structures.

ASD kids may prefer to be alone, but can benefit from gentle social interaction, such as taking turns or sharing play equipment. It's also good to know that kids with ASD have some typical physical needs that overlap heavily with those of kids with many other disabilities.

The middle schoolers, all 300 of them, eat lunch on the playground. They used to wander around the asphalt area and plop down somewhere on the blacktop. Now, they converge on the 10-ft. diameter, 30-inch high concrete starfish-shaped planter, which has a compacted crushed rock base, a concrete rat slab layer and a mortared 1-2-inch thick granite veneer. The flowering catalpa at the center will in time create a green umbrella shade effect. The slope creates a gentle challenge for kids who do not have a good sense of balance.

The Existing Playground
Salmon Bay K-8 has about 600 students, with over half in the middle school program. A typical recess brings 130 kids out onto this space. The middle schoolers eat lunch on the playground"?uall 300 of them, wandering around with food in hand looking for a place to sit. The playground was a big, fenced in expanse of asphalt with some game markings, some planters, picnic tables and three basketball backboards. In one corner a rectangle of woodchips enclosed a play structure and several spinning devices. While kids with ASD love spinning, they'd have trouble negotiating the busy sharing interactions. An adjacent fenced off area offers a synthetic soccer field.

The project had a public matching grant, so we engaged the community through public meetings and workshops. Parents and kids reported the ASD kids tended to pace around the perimeter of the playground next to the fence, as did some non-ASD kids. Not all kids want to play games on the blacktop or jostle about on the climbing structure. There's always a subset of kids wandering about the edges of a playground in little groups or alone.

The very first part of the playground, implemented by parents to build enthusiasm for raising funds, was the "flow line," a 300' long undulating hopscotch simply painted on the ground and encircling the playground. The blue segments represent even numbers; the green are odd numbers; and the purple for prime numbers. It gives kids a familiar path of travel, something to count, and since the segments aren't numbered, it's a special puzzle for kids to figure out. Donor recognition tiles were incorporated into the planters.

Everyone agreed the playground needed more equipment. The most frequent requests were monkey bars, and some nature, the latter a challenge on a limited site with heavy kid-traffic and virtually no maintenance capabilities. There were large trees outside the fences bordering the playground. Parents were very focused on having a bridge and a dry creek. While the textures and even the physical challenge of walking over the arched surface may be relevant for kids with ASD, the pretend play of most autistic kids tends to be oriented towards vehicles and machinery.

The playground had deteriorating paving and "Lake Salmon Bay," a low spot that puddled water. With a construction budget of $260,000, we couldn't transform the entire site, but instead focused on inserting a playground within the playground.

We concluded the most important concept was separating stimuli and offering choices, creating divisions of space to allow kids to hang back before jumping in. This was accomplished by removing the requisite asphalt to make room for a 10-ft. diameter, 30-inch high concrete circular planter with a catalpa, a flowering plant in the Bignoniaceae family. This starfish-shaped "stone tree root planter" has a compacted crushed rock base, a concrete rat slab layer and a mortared 1"-2" thick granite veneer. Granite boulders and donor recognition cobbles were incorporated. We hope the catalpa will soon be a giant green umbrella with the stone arms appearing to be like giant roots that extend for an overall diameter of about 50 feet. The "roots" create separate spaces without creating visual barriers.

Kids, walk, lie, crawl and sit on the inclined surface. For the ASD kids, walking on it is a bit of a challenge. The head playground supervisor opines the tree root planter is the best achievement of the new playground, and popular with the kids. You'd think it was designed expressly as a pre-teen hangout. The planter is a transition space for the kids where they can hang out before deciding on an activity. The root planter transitions on one side into a dry stream bed with embedded recycled glass and boulders. The shape of the stone root planter is echoed, in an eroded form, by the "plinth," a concrete surface elevated a couple of steps above the playground. It separates the blacktop games from the new play area, functioning as a stage, a lookout and a gathering point.

Landscape Structures play equipment was carefully selected to meet the needs of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). One of the favorite playground pieces is the Double Bobble Rider. The research of the landscape architects reveals that ASD kids like the rhythmic movement of teeter-totters, but sharing equipment can be intimidating. With a set distance between users, however, ASD kids are more comfortable with sharing.

Project Team
Design: Johnson+Southerland, architects and landscape architects, Maggi Johnson-principal, Benjamin Barrett-project landscape architect.
Construction: Celtic Concrete, Damian Howard
Project Owner: Friends of Salmon Bay
Property Owner: Seattle Public Schools