LASN is a photographically oriented, professional journal featuring topics of concern and state-of-the-art projects designed or influenced by registered Landscape Architects.
Issue link: https://landscapearchitect.epubxp.com/i/85881
Above, Left Bankshot was invented by Rabbi Reeve Brenner to allow able- bodied and disabled children to play together. This alternative to basketball is nonaggressive: no body contact or intimidation. The Bankshot set up at the Deicke Discrovery Zone is 12 stations with colorful fiberglass backboards in varying shapes and dimensions and rims at different heights, plus one standard basketball backboard and rim. Players make baskets by banking the ball off the backboard. Three shooting positions are marked in color in front of each basket. The final station is trickier: two backboards/rims stacked atop one another. Top, Right The Landscape Structures school theme area includes a schoolhouse, a school bus with a dashboard and steering wheel, and wheelchair accessible ramps connecting all the play pieces. Bottom, Right There are logos in the safety surfacing for the Huntley Police and Huntley Fire & Rescue (in front of a fire truck/slide play piece). Sensors in this "first responders" area emanate sirens sounds and safety reminders. The children of Thom Palmer, executive director of the Huntley Parks District, recorded these messages. 54 Landscape Architect and Specifier News Brenner's noncompetitive focus for his game takes some cues from Alfie Kohn, who writes and speaks about education and parenting. Among his books is No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Houghton Mifflin, 1986/1992), a controversial treatise that questions putting children in competitive situations in which there is a winner and a loser, and points to the psychological damage done to the "losers." Brenner's Bankshot is meant to be a sport without opponents, the participants playing the challenge of the court, not against one another. (Editor's note: Of course if Bankshot existed when I was a kid, we would have been playing "horse" or one-on-one to make it competitive.) Most importantly, those in wheelchairs can play and enjoy the game just as much as those with no physical disabilities. Bankshot Bankboards have been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Israel National Museum in Jerusalem, The Discovery Science Museum in Connecticut and the Boston Children's Museum. The Deicke Discovery Zone playground had its grand opening in June 2010.