Not Just Playing Safe

Aditi Agrawal and Anjali Menon go beyond conventional swings and slides to create customized playgrounds that are fun, safe, and developmentally appropriate.

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When did the idea of designing play areas first cross your mind?

AA: Anjali and I are batch mates from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. While studying Furniture Design, we got a really good opportunity to understand different materials and structures. It was all very hands on, so we could literally see what works and what doesn’t. During the last academic semester, we had a classroom project called ‘Design for Special Needs’ for which we were supposed to design for people whose requirements were slightly different from the mainstream population. We visited many special schools to do research, including the Blind People’s Association (BPA), Ahmedabad. BPA had children with different kinds of intellectual and physical limitations. While sitting through their classroom sessions, we realized that the children had never gone outdoors to play! There were two reasons for this - the existing playground equipment was unsafe for them, and there is a huge social stigma attached to disability and therefore the parents would never take them outdoors to play.