Project Tunnel Vision - Kid Krafting

description

Kid Krafting is a series of hypothetical playground equipment pieces designed to solicit inquiry into the over-safety of contemporary playgrounds. Growing research reveals the importance of risky play in childhood development and the psychopathologic consequences of cotton-coated play. Playgrounds today do not provide the opportunities and challenges that a child needs to grow, resulting in the development of anxiety in children.

By designing play equipment for specific anxiety disorders, Kid Krafting brings to light a relevant societal issue that plagues children across Western society. The project does this by taking four of the most common anxiety disorders in children and visually representing them in through tweaked playground equipment. The result is Kid Krafting – playgrounds to develop anxiety disorders in children.

Articles such as ‘Risky Play from an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences’ by Ellen Sandseter of Queen Maud University in Norway suggests that the child’s desire for risky scenarios needs to be accommodated in the playground and that suppressing these types of play has dire effects on the mental development of children. This discovery led me to address the problem of ‘children not being exposed to sufficient risk in order to grow’.

The project addresses this problem by telling a story to the viewer rather than offering a design solution in the form of a product. The figurative representations of anxiety disorders offer no solutions, rather, ask questions and demand inquiry from the viewer in regards to the safety, aesthetic, function, and industry of modern playgrounds. The product packaging pushes the idea of standardized play spaces to the extreme while reminding the viewer that giving our children anxiety is voluntary. Kid Krafting opens the discussion to a relevant issue in a provocative manner by asking the viewer to imagine hypothetical futures of play.