This summer, we were very lucky to welcome back a student playground designer to learn more about our program. We always hope that our participatory design process exposes young people to green jobs. From construction to landscape architecture to environmental education, our program showcases that there are lots of ways to build a more equitable and resilient future. We asked Josh a few questions about his experience with us and have posted his answers below. Thank you for your interest and work this summer, Josh! We wish you all the luck in your studies!
On the first day of Participatory Design:
It was a valuable and much enjoyed experience getting to be a part of designing a playground with TPL. I was a part of the student design team last spring from March 2022-May 2022 at the NYC Lab School (70M). I had never heard of TPL before this but had been seeing their work on schoolyards around the city for years without realizing it. I remember on the first day of the participatory design when we started by going out to the schoolyard and measuring the space, talking about the noise level, discussing what we can see around us in the streetscape, how the sun hits the yard throughout the day—and where we’d like to see more benches in the shade or where we thought trees would get the most sunlight—and what we liked to do in the yard that we wanted to celebrate in the design process.
Honoring Lenapehoking:
Before design began, I had published a land acknowedgement in an open letter in our school paper following a workshop on Lenapehoking which I designed and led the previous year. In the design process, I wanted to honor indigenous stewards and help with the land acknowledgment on the playground mural. I had no idea that TPL would be aware of a student interest in Indigenous justice and using the schoolyard to center that work so I was delighted and honored to give a brief verbal acknowledgement of the Lenape nation which our schoolyard sits on. I had previously worked with my environmental science teacher to see how we could adapt the often ignored raised plant beds in the schoolyard as a community garden and space dedicated to honoring Lenapehoking, so seeing TPL’s project as a chance to concretely ensure better appreciation and vitality of the space after I graduate was spectacular.
Envisioning a Green Career:
As the oldest member of the student design team it was special to see some of the middle school student designers start to think about the way their city works through the lens of designing their dream school yard. I had been interested in urbanism and sustainable design for as long as I can remember and had already arranged to study geography for undergrad, but designing my school’s yard with TPL in my senior year was one of the first times I was able to envision a future career for myself within the green infrastructure space.
When we made a list of what we wanted to see in the yard and generated the survey info I felt excited at the opportunity to put my ideas and elevate the ideas of some of my younger schoolmates into real infrastructure we can enjoy. I remember I wanted more greenery and shade trees and seating options, as the sun-drenched asphalt had never before been a valuable school resource for my friends and I. Seeing Joan and Maddalena write down our ideas and listen to our experiences in the space and our visions for a better yard felt validating. Using the paper cutouts to collaboratively design drafts for our ideal yards was particularly cool to me, I had been designing imaginary spaces with paper for as long as I can remember, but doing so with the express purpose of guiding TPL and the landscape architects in making the proposed schematics felt immensely meaningful.
Getting a print out of the schematic with our color-seal art and design input at the end of the PD sessions, along with an overview of the estimated budget, was really impactful in helping me formalize my career aspirations. The day we got the schematics was actually senior skip day, and I had had no intention of going to school that day, but knowing that it would be the last PD session and what I then thought would be my last interaction with TPL I made sure to come to school just for the PD session.
Being a part of designing the schoolyard really solidified my personal legacy at my high school, as flowers and trees I drew will be immortalized as color-seal decoration and a land acknowledgement statement I crafted will adorn the mural and serve to remind students, faculty, and community members of our responsibility to uphold social and environmental justice in the schoolyard where we learn, work, and play.
Thanks to TPL I know for certain that I’ll always feel a special connection to the schoolyard because of how though I didn’t often utilize the boring asphalt space as a student I now feel a great deal of appreciation and amazement for how my input in the design will live on in the schoolyard that I won’t get to enjoy as a student but will be able to enjoy as a designer.
Big surprises this summer:
My biggest surprise was just how complicated making a space enjoyable can be. As a user of playgrounds and avid tree climber in NYC for years as a kid I had always approached green space from the perspective of maximizing my play time and quality when outdoors, I had no real idea of the precision and dedication which goes into actually designing, funding, permitting, and constructing a schoolyard. Even now, after helping in bits and pieces on various projects in the office and on project sites I still am in shock at the reality of what it is to make designing land for people your chosen career. I’ve had aspirations to do work like this for years but only now understand a small piece of what that work entails. Seeing another side of the design and stewardship of projects in working with Project Hope and students on a planting day in the Bronx was an epiphany. I realized just how wide-reaching planting in schoolyards can be, from working with people twice my age in green job training in the Bronx to working with people half my age at a new project site at a school in Queens where they’ll see those herbs and veggies grow as they grow; planting has helped connect me to people across races, genders, ages, socioeconomic status this summer in ways that I never could have imagined without TPL.
Favorite moments of working with TPL:
Some favorite moments would have to be going to schoolyards and getting my hands dirty, really getting into the actual work which goes into making a schoolyard project with TPL so special for everyone involved. Another favorite moment was getting to create an archive system for the over 200 past playground projects. Organizing thousands of paper pages of technical plans and design specifications solidified in me the love and labor which went into each playground’s design and execution. Being trusted to sort through it all and create an archive system for it was immensely gratifying.
Biggest wish for young people navigating the modern world right now:
I’ve realized that it’s really special to be young, to have questions and need guidance from others, and to not be ashamed to be helped. That’s what I found with the PD sessions last year, Maddy and Joan wanted to bring out our ideas from within us and get us to realize our imaginations in this space through our own discovery of what we understood green spaces to be. It wasn’t some artificial insertion of someone else’s corporatized ideas that found its way into the plans for the 70M schoolyard. It was our own ideas realized through the careful direction of TPL, which never felt overpowering and was always fulfilled with warmth and understanding. Essentially my biggest wish for young people is to get TPL to come and offer PD sessions so they too can feel special and maybe one day realize their dreams of designing land for people too.
The Kid Insight:
As a kid I would intentionally engage with greenspace in ways perhaps they weren’t always designed, climbing parts of the play structure which weren’t meant to be climbed, collecting sticks and rocks and leaves which young children perhaps ought not collect, always touching things and smelling things and trying to absorb and feel as much as possible wherever I went to see what I liked in this world. In some ways, those are qualities I never gave up and qualities I feel are really valuable to any design process but especially for playgrounds.
As adults, we lose so much of that spark which make schoolyards exciting, and I will try to hold onto any shred of that youthful longing for recess as I go into my second year of my degree.
Really placing myself into smaller shoes and viewing the world from the ground up as a child running from those school doors to the shiny green roof gazebo in one of TPL’s playgrounds has been a uniquely valuable adventure. I am grateful that during my internship, I felt fostered in my intellectual desire for green design career development and in my childlike wonder. It boils down to having a sense of purpose in what one does 9-5 mon-fri, and designing playgrounds is, to me, an ideal way to spend one’s career and offer something tangible and enjoyable to our most precious natural resource: children.