High Sees

This play space, built like a boat and set atop of the roof of a preschool, investigates the design of play, unscripted. 

This project questions whether the restrictions of safety codes for play spaces require the act of play to be equally constrained.  Its pattern and details toy with architecture's visual presentation, producing spatial perceptions that differ from physical reality in order to ignite the imagination.  Its parts are boats, spacecraft, rocks and more within a blue-hued sea or extended sky. This is a space within which to invent play that is designed to withstand two major forces: preschoolers and New England seasonal swings.

High Sees offers high variability of what one ‘sees’ and does amidst safe, but playful, architectural parts.

Project Team:  Megan Panzano in collaboration with Brown Fenollosa Architects with Sever Construction for adaptive reuse of moblie station to school @ 93 Broadway;  Chase Wilke of Wilke Built – installation of playground decking and fencing; Bill Bancroft with Emma Schmidt – fabrication of custom play elements; Megan Panzano with Julia Mercedes Roberts and Stephanie Lloyd - representation

Photography:  Megan Panzano and Anita Kan

Completed July 2019 for Springboard Schools, Inc., Arlington MA

Featured in “Power Play,” Harvard Gazette, December 2019 and honored as one of “38 Perfect Parks,” Minneapolis Magazine, April 2020, a piece on progressive play spaces