Time to return to the always inspirational adventure playground. We already described the essence of what adventure playgrounds are in other articles, we now turn to the reality and details of a specific adventure playground: the Berkeley adventure playground. How does it work? What does it look like? How does one maintain an adventure playground?

The Berkeley adventure playground is operated by the parks and recreation organization of Berkeley – thus it is a public, city maintained playground. The entrance of the playground faces the majestic Berkeley marina and waterfront. You don’t realize exactly what it is when you first arrive, as a wooden fence covers all but the highest towers from the onlookers view. When you find the entrance, the first thing you see a set of rules hanging on the entrance: “In the adventure playground you can build with hammers, nails, saws and paint. You can also play on structures, a zip line (trolley), tire wall, rope swing and cargo net. Adults must come in with their children and check in with the staff.”

We were childless, but walked in, found a staff member and told them we wanted to walk around. Before ever setting foot in an adventure playground, my assumption was always no adults allowed unless your child was under a certain age. Here though, because it is free for children to come with their parents, there were almost as many adults as children milling around in the playground’s sprawling space. Most of the adults were engaged in conversation with other adults, while most of the children were involved in conversation or building or playing with other children. We were free to mingle as we wanted, with or without children.

The most prominent thing you will notice, and to an adventure playground fan’s delight, the space is filled with dilapidated shanty plywood buildings, covered with worn off paint and funny mash-ups of materials. It looked kinda dangerous! The grass and weeds around the play structures are kept long, growing up the structures. When we spoke to one of the staff members, the basic ‘underlying’ rules to the buildings were that the children could do what they wanted, but the staff at the end of the day would go around and assess the structural elements and remove anything that looked too dangerous. He also mentioned that many days children will build small plywood ‘box’ houses that can’t withstand more then one days use, which they will also take down. What remains up are the pieces that are nailed in fairly well and seem to be structurally sound, or pieces that are for aesthetic purposes only.

While walking around what is beautiful to notice is the number of unique spaces there are to interact with. Some children were hiding under one of the structures laying on make-shift hammocks in the dark. Others were on the high tower painting their names in bright red. Many were in line to go on the zip line that crash lands them in a giant sand pile. We saw children by themselves milling around, groups of children working together and children exploring areas with the parents – it was truly an eclectic mix of activities and engagements. There was even a vegetable garden growing which the children were welcome to eat off of, but was primarily made by a staff member so he could eat vegetables while at work.

Ironically, because the playground takes donations of all kinds, there was also ‘regular’ playground equipment tucked and clearly abandoned in a corner of the play space. No one was even near it. In other parts of the playground though, old playground equipment had been reused and turned into ladders, floors for structures, and slide exits for little houses. Not only was old playground equipment reused, many other kinds of unexpected play equipment could be found hiding everywhere. For instance, an old surfboard was tied to some logs to make a bench. A worn out boat was just sitting in the middle of the grass filled with weeds and sand and children. Left over carpet was used as ceilings. An old grand piano inside was used as a ladder of sorts.

One of my personal favorite elements of the playground were the painted words/poems/names that children had tagged on many of the structures. It was not hard to sense the liberation the children must have felt while painting on the ‘establishment’ of the built environment. Tagging is allowed here, painting is allowed, painting on the grass is even okay. The entrance to the playground even has an entire section of work benches and tables where children can making paintings, small wooden crafts or parts or sculptures that are not part of the larger play architecture.

While the playground seems like a free-for-all jumble in the midst of suburban bliss, it still maintains a sense of classic rules with socialist tendencies. Children can’t just grab a gallon of paint and pour it all over a play structure. The staff have set up a bartering system for the children in order for them to have access to materials. Children can ‘earn points’ towards tools, paint, nails etc. by finding/collecting one of the following from somewhere on the playground: 10 nails, 5 wood splinters (bigger than your pinky), 5 pieces of trash, or 1 Mr. Dangerous (the sharp end of a nail sticking out of a board). Once they have earned some points, they can then have access to the materials used on the playground. Somehow even with like forty or so children running around, most of them managed to have tools or paint or be busy with found materials.

The adventure playground isn’t exactly a parent-less democracy with paradigm shifting visions of architecture, as some would like to romanticize – but from what we experienced, it is very close. Children are experimenting in a relatively safe and empowering environment. The architecture has remained steadily standing, yet forever changing, for over 30 years. Impressively the playground has maintained its gritty and child-centered aesthetics while remaining welcoming to all ages, and disciplined in their execution of their vision of a child created play space. Anyone interested in truly play engaging spaces must visit the Berkeley adventure playground!

Photos taken by: Benjamin Turner.

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