Urban sensory park : design facilitating children with disabilities
Authors
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Marlow, Christopher M.
Blalock, Joseph C.
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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.