One of our weekly assignments was to visit Millennium Park and document our experience, and reflect on how the park can be a therapeutic landscape. I’ve been to Millennium Park several times, and even during my summer internship at Gensler, I would sit outside during my lunch break to get fresh air and relax.
I wouldn’t consider the entire park a therapeutic landscape, however the Lurie Garden certainly is; and it's one of my favorite places to sit in. The Garden is surrounded with landscaping that serves as a noise buffer, and there’s a nice sunken pond with seating alongside it. When you are in this space, it is very easy to forget that you are in a public space surrounded by hundreds of people.
Within approaching this assignment, I took advantage of an opportunity to take my younger cousins to the Maggie Daley park. Today was a little nicer than most of the days we’ve had over the past weeks, but there was a cool breeze blowing. I will not state their names, but simply describe them. The little girl has been to the park once on a school field trip, and the little boy has never been downtown. This was quite an experience for all of us; this was both of their first times riding the L, and this was my first time being in Maggie Daley Park. On the train ride there the little boy was fascinated with the architecture in the city, he would say things like “woah! That’s the tallest building I’ve ever seen in my life!” Both of them spent the entire train ride looking outside the window, excited when another train passed by and playing little games with each other.
When we finally made it downtown, the journey to Maggie Daley was a lot longer than I expected, and both of them were getting restless because they were anxious about reaching the park. The little boy had never been to a playground of this size; from far away he was excited, but as soon as we got to the park the large jungle gym was a little too scary for him. This was the little girl’s second time being at the park, so she knew exactly what she wanted to play on; and what new spaces to explore.
Ambitious at heart, he tried so hard to keep up with the little girl (who’s a little over twice his age), but he was honestly too young for the space. I found myself trying to encourage him and reassure him that he was safe; but I almost got myself stuck climbing into these tight children’s spaces. After a while, I realized that there were various signs spread across the playground that shows age appropriateness. This was very helpful for me, because the little boy was only experiencing playing on the slides because everything else was too big for him.
Once we went to this abandoned ship theme park of the park, the little boy fell in love with it and he started to have a lot more fun. We also played in the mirror maze and the enchanted forest, which were both at scales that worked in the little boy’s age range. Surprisingly, there was a lighthouse that was specifically a slide, and in the summertime become a waterpark. In my mind the slide was too big for the little boy, but with the help of the little girl telling him “you can do it! Look it's not so scary.” He climbed his was to the top and slid down the slide. When he got off the slide you can see the Ah Ha! Moment he had in his face; once he realized that he could do it and that it wasn’t as scary as he thought it was. I couldn’t get either of them away from that slide for about an hour.
Maggie Daley is a great playground, and an awesome space for parents to bring their kids and for families to spend time. What’s nice about a space like this is that adult interventions are really important in creating this safe space for kids to play, be free and have fun. I noticed that regardless of if it was their child or not, every adult would intervene when necessary to protect the kids from hurting themselves, and encourage kids to play with each other.
We spent about 4 hours at the park, and I almost think I was more exhausted than they were. On our way back to the train we peaked briefly into the Lurie garden and stopped at the Bean (neither of them had ever been to the bean before).
While both of them were disappointed about leaving, I told them that when it’s much warmer outside, I will take them back to the park.
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