STANDARDS
Core Art Standards: VA2, VA3, VA10
Designing for Play
Niek de Jong talks about his work as a playground designer
Images courtesy of Niek de Jong and Earthscape.
How does this marine-themed play sculpture empower kids?
Scholastic Art: What is your job?
Niek de Jong: I am a playground designer. More specifically, I am a play sculpture and play concept designer. I’m based in the Netherlands and work for a Canadian playground design company called Earthscape. We design artistic play sculptures for landscape architects and other clients around the world.
Niek de Jong starts with 2-D and 3-D sketches and models.
SA: What does it take to design a great playground?
NJ: A good playground empowers kids to make decisions. There shouldn’t be just one way up or down on a play sculpture. Kids should be able to decide for themselves how they want to play. They should be able to go up, down, left or right, and move in a variety of ways.
SA: Can you share a recent project you are proud of?
Niek de Jong
NJ: Yes, a marine-themed waterfront park in Seattle, Washington—it just opened in July 2025. The main play sculpture is a 25-foot-tall jellyfish climbing structure (above). It was a big design challenge because I couldn’t just design a beautiful jellyfish. I had to create an abstract sculpture of a jellyfish that could accommodate many different opportunities for play. It has an 18-foot slide and swooping tentacles with different play features on them such as climbing walls, handholds, climbable nets, and slide bars. The playground also has an abstract kelp forest with crab wobble boards kids can climb.
SA: What is your creative process?
NJ: First, I develop the playground’s narrative, or the story to be told in the space. The most successful designs almost always involve interactions between a protagonist and another object or creature. Maybe there is a fox curiously peering at a butterfly, a proud ram climbing on some rocks, or a big bear accompanied by a small bear. Building a narrative really makes the playground scene come alive, especially when you incorporate great play value.
Niek de Jong starts with 2-D and 3-D sketches and models.
SA: What happens after you develop the narrative?
NJ: I create sketches and 3-D massing models. A massing model is like a scale model and sketch in 3-D. It’s a simplified version of what you want to build that’s used to explore shape, form, and layout during the early stages of design. I play with poses in 2-D sketches and 3-D modeling to explore meaningful, yet technically feasible, compositions for the project. I like working in 3-D because I can experiment by stretching, compressing, and extracting. The accidents and mutations that happen when designing in 3-D are very helpful for generating ideas. I think controlled chaos is important for successful design. Not getting lost in that journey of chaos is the biggest challenge!
3-D models give de Jong the ability to experiment with shape and form.
SA: What did you study in school?
NJ: I have a bachelor’s degree in industrial product design. This means I studied materials, spatial design, and the way things are constructed and assembled. Industrial designers combine art, business, and engineering in their work.
SA: Do you have any predictions for the future of playground design?
NJ: Creature play sculptures are popular at this time, but that may not be the case five years from now. Maybe by then we will be designing playgrounds around more abstract themes such as the emotions of love or happiness. It would be interesting to explore how we might design playgrounds to express those concepts.
3-D models give de Jong the ability to experiment with shape and form.
