New playground ideas land at BSA

You may have been reading about Design Museum Boston‘s exhibit because there has been so much advance press and articles about play. The show opened last week at the Boston Society of Architects venue and will be on view all summer. I’m not sold on the term ‘playscapes’ but I’ll definitely see this exhibit. I’m expecting plans and ideas rather than actual playground equipment. There’s a party favor: a playground passport your kids can leave with as they head out to play for real in Boston parks.

A trending topic the show may cover is the idea of opening up all those schoolyard playgrounds for use by the community when the schools aren’t using them– at night, off days and hours. Here’s a recent article making the rounds from the Atlantic Monthly magazine and the trailer from the documentary The Land.

A cemetery budget is no walk in the park (and neither is a cemetery)

Swinging wildly through the stages of life: historic cemeteries, ‘gardens with graves’, are inspiring multi use discussion of a different sort. Cemeteries established in the 1800’s were rolling landscapes, beautifully designed to welcome the general public. Massachusetts’ first one:

“Mt. Auburn is more like a park than a crypt. It is 175 acres of winding paths, dignified trees, whispery breezes, and shimmering lakes. The land, called “Stone’s Wood,” used to be beloved by Harvard students as the perfect place to take respite from the bustle of 19th-century life, and the Cemetery was created in 1831 to ensure that the growing cities of Cambridge and Watertown would not envelop the forest’s beauty. The founders were successful in their efforts.” read more from this Harvard Crimson article.

In Gloucester, renewed attention for care in several cemeteries is under way. Sign up for the Oak Grove cemetery tour June 25th or July 2 to learn more about one of our own ‘Mt. Auburns by the sea’. The tours will be led by Courtney Richardson.