Publisher Description

Outdoor Environments for People addresses the everyday human behavior in outdoor built environments and explains how designers can learn about and incorporate their knowledge into places they help to create. Bridging research and practice, and drawing from disciplines such as environmental psychology, cultural geography, and sociology, the book provides an overview of theories, such as personal space, territoriality, privacy, and place attachment, that are explored in the context of outdoor environments and, in particular, the landscape architecture profession. Authors share the impact that place design can have on individuals and communities with regard to health, safety, and belonging. Beautifully designed and highly illustrated in full color, this book presents analysis, community engagement, and design processes for understanding and incorporating the social and psychological influences of an environment and discusses examples of outdoor place design that skillfully respond to human factors. As a textbook for landscape architecture students and a reference for practitioners, it includes chapters addressing different realms of people–place relationships, examples of theoretical applications, case studies, and exercises that can be incorporated into any number of design courses. Contemporary design examples, organized by place type and illustrating key human factor principles, provide valuable guidance and suggestions. Outdoor Environments for People is a must-have resource for students, instructors, and professionals within landscape architecture and the surrounding disciplines.

This book focuses on key issues and current research evidence of links between children's behavior in outdoor play environments and children's development. Specific attention is given to ways that outdoor play environments are extensions of other development settings, like the classroom or family. Since most work up to this point has focused on development in indoor classroom settings or in other developmental contexts, this book makes an important contribution.

From adding richness and variety to learning, to redesigning a playground, this highly accessible text will provide early years practitioners with a wealth of ideas on how to foster creative play and learning in the outdoor environment with a focus on interacting with the natural world.

As we become familiar with the 21st century we can see that what we are designing is changing, new technologies support the creation of new forms of product and service, and new pressures on business and society demand the design of solutions to increasingly complex problems, sometimes local, often global in nature. Customers, users and stakeholders are no longer passive recipients of design, expectations are higher, and increased participation is often essential. This book explores these issues through the work of 21 research teams. Over a twelve-month period each of these groups held a series of workshops and events to examine different facets of future design activity as part of the UK's research council supported Designing for the 21st Century Research Initiative. Each of these 21 contributions describes the context of enquiry, the journey taken by the research team and key insights generated through discourse. Editor and Initiative Director, Tom Inns, provides an introductory chapter that suggests ways that the reader might navigate these different viewpoints.

This title was first published in 2001. Architects, landscape designers, builders, gardeners and teachers have all at some time been called upon to design a play area. Unfortunately, this diversity has not resulted in a similar diversity of design solutions for this very problematic task. Despite a proliferation of "how to" books on this subject, playgrounds have remained virtually the same throughout the world since their creation over a century ago. This is not a "how to" design book. Instead, based on thirty years experience as a specialist play area designer, Barbara Hendricks details a radically new approach, applying cutting-edge thinking from child development and child psychology to find innovative design solutions, challenging the established notions of play provision. Covering key sociological, public policy, environmental and design issues, this book provides designers with an exploration of, and guide to, designing from a "child's eye" view of the world. Beautifully crafted and copiously illustrated with numerous examples of recently designed playgrounds, this book is not only stimulating and informative, but fun to read and seriously playful in itself.

10 years ago Barbara Hendricks brought together thinking from child development and child psychology perspectives on play with practical issues confronted by designers and policy makers. The result was a beautifully-crafted, well-illustrated guide challenging established notions of play provision. This second edition brings the text up to date from 2001 to 2010 with added discussion about new ideas for play area designs and what has not worked in the past decade.

Packed full of practical ideas, Teaching Design and Technology Creatively is a stimulating source of guidance for busy trainee and practising teachers. Grounded in the latest research, it offers a wealth of suggestions to foster creative development in D&T and supports teachers in providing their students with more authentic, enjoyable experiences. Providing a wealth of ready-to-use ideas for creative lessons, key topics covered include: Understanding links between D&T and creativity Creating a foundation for D&T in the early years Using objects, books and real-life contexts as imaginative starting points Developing designerly thinking Making the most of construction kits Helping children draw to develop their ideas Encouraging dialogic talk in D&T to drive learning Exploring food as a creative resource Practical approaches to embedding IT and programming in the curriculum Taking learning outside the classroom. Teaching Design and Technology Creatively provides practical teaching suggestions to ensure teachers of all levels understand how to teach for creativity. It shows how learning experiences in D&T have the potential to extend children’s technological knowledge, and to promote problem-solving and evaluation skills. Drawing on examples from real-world projects, this text is invaluable for all those who wish to engage students in D&T and encourage creative classroom practice.