Abstract:
This comprehensive project designed an urban sensory park
where children with disabilities are comfortably enveloped by an outdoor environment providing interactive enlightenment.
It compiled research on therapeutic gardens, child playgrounds,
accessibility needs and related professional studies into an urban
design focusing on the interaction of children displaying physical
and mental disabilities. The final park layout, built on underused
lot space, personally benefits child development and their
environmental involvement through art installations, spatial
definition, and interactive play equipment. The park as well
as benefitting its focused users, children with disabilities, also
had a secondary motive to benefitting the surrounding urban
community with its safe and colorful habitat.
The design project was successful. Design solutions were
generated which helped to alleviate current problems of underuse,
lack of identity, and lack of park space. The researched
effectiveness of his project was developed to serve as an
exemplary implementation and guidelines for an urban par unique to special needs children.