Docomomo US Highlights Bay Area’s Radical Playgrounds in Year of Recreation and Plan

Berkeley Adventure Playground, c. 1980s–present. Overview of playground environment. Materials include telephone poles, rope, tires, and wood. Credit: Colin Alley, AIA, 2026.

San Francisco architect and Docomomo US/Northern California member, Colin Alley, has written a new essay in which he examines the development of the European adventure-playground movement—this movement being based on children having free access to tools, scrap materials, earth, and controlled risk—within the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1960s up to 1979. The essay, which was published on August 26, 2026, links C. Th. Sørensen's 1943 Emdrup "junk playground" and Lady Allen of Hurtwood's work in the UK to the countercultural design environment of the Bay Area and to UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design.

The article examines two local initiatives. The Washington Environmental Yard at Washington Elementary School, which began in 1971 under the initiative of Robin C. Moore and Herbert H. Wong, transformed the mostly asphalt schoolyard through child-oriented planning, gardens, landscape features, water, and movable 'loose parts'. The article then looks at the opening of the Berkeley Adventure Playground at the Marina on June 18, 1979—a one-acre site with staff present where children build and take down their own structures using wood, rope, tires, paint, and tools.

Alley contends that the problem of preservation is special in that these landscapes are significant not because of their intact physical structure but because of the ongoing practices involving improvisation, participation, risk, and rebuilding; the Berkeley site, which is still in operation, is in fact the oldest currently operating dedicated adventure playground in the country and represents an exceptionally true American version of Sørensen’s model.

Join Docomomo US/Northern California on October 10 for a celebration of Recreation and Play through Merritt Modernism. Member tickets on sale September 10, General Admission on sale September 17th. Follow us on Eventbrite to be notified of new events.