Grange Park playground gets rave reviews

July 1st 2017 marked the grand opening of the Grange Park playground. The playground neighbours the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Ontario College of Art & Design in downtown Toronto. The new playground is part of a larger park revitalization project. PFS Studio was the Prime Consultant and Lead Designer and Earthscape joined the team as a design-build partner.

In homage to its neighbours, the playground represents elements of an artist’s studio after a frenzy of work. The north playground features climbing structures themed as a spilled paint can and crumpled paper. Similarly, the south playground includes an elevated colourful artist’s palette nestled among mature trees. This is connected via rope bridge to a conté crayon tower with a 10′ slide. Moreover, a squished paint tube sits nearby. The art-themed playground offers an incredible amount of play value while inspiring creativity in play.

Because of the distinct design, the playground has been attracting a lot of attention from playground enthusiasts. A recent blog post by Kids in T.O. describes the “stunning new natural art-themed playground” as a “thumbs up.” Playgroundology blogger, Alex Smith (aka Mr. Playgroundology) discussed the playground in “A Canvas for Play,”. His blog post describes the playground features from his perspective as a proponent of great play spaces for kids. Just after the grand opening, DadCity, a Toronto blogger who writes about raising kids in the City, said it was already one of his favourite Toronto playgrounds. In other words, the playground has been a huge hit!

The Grange Park/AGO playground was also a ‘featured playground’ in the list of Canada’s coolest 150 playgrounds. The list was compiled by nine playground writers from across Canada, led by Dana at the Calgary Playground Review.