"When the children are happy, everyone benefits." Monocle
Playgrounds
The only way I can truly understand something is by physically engaging with it. I need to walk through it, crawl up it, roll down it, swim in it. I use my fingertips—not just my brain—to observe and solve problems. Unfortunately, computers don't allow for that.
Playgrounds are rare civic infrastructure for people still learning how the world works. They are public, social, and physical. Over the past four years, I've been working to make the abstract ideas of computer science tangible—even when you're on your hands and knees.
Children are full-bodied, social, and imaginative learners. They don't need to sit still to understand computers. They need ways to feel these ideas early, practice them with others, and build confidence to shape the world they inherit.
The First Playground
Ruoholahti
Helsinki, Finland — 2024
The Ruoholahti Computer Playground turns the invisible world of computing into physical play. The entire space is organized around the flow of computation—input, processing, and output—so that small bodies can explore big ideas without needing a screen or even knowing the words.
My hope is that this computer-themed park will help children see the world of computers as approachable and adaptable. Imagine them crawling into a computer tower, seeing themselves as data moving inside a machine, or jumping on a giant keyboard to spell their names in binary.
For many children visiting the playground, the most natural public space to meet up is a Fortnite lobby. For them, sandbox mode means a game mod, not a box filled with sand. This playground bridges both worlds.
Play Structures
Click image to flip: built / sketch
A six-metre tower children can climb into as a data packet and slide out as output.
Curriculum activities
Click image to flip: built / sketch
Jump on it. Learn to spell your name with binary numbers.
Curriculum activities
Click image to flip: built / sketch
Move beads to build numbers in powers of two. Learn place value with your whole body.
Curriculum activities
Click image to flip: built / sketch
Encourages group play. Perform a victory dance on a phone screen.
Curriculum activities
Click image to flip: built / sketch
If you're happy today, jump here. If not, jump there. Kids invent rules, play robots, and naturally engage with sequence, selection, and iteration.
Curriculum activities
Click image to flip: built / sketch
A chalkboard screen for collaborative work. The sandbox shaped like a game controller becomes anything children imagine.
Curriculum activities
Process
From Notebook to Tower
I've always loved the “how things are made” genre—the detailed journey from draft to real life. Hundreds of hours of work lie between the initial sketches and the final park. Here's how a small drawing in a notebook became a six-metre tower in real life.
Research
Building a Vocabulary
For almost four years, I kept a folder with notes, images, and clippings. My research began with understanding playground design, aesthetics, and the broader built environment. Placing this project within the wider landscape of standardized playgrounds, adventure playgrounds, and other play structures helped me build a vocabulary and frame the vision.
Fall 2020
First Concept Sketches
The first drawings outlined a rough structure, dividing the space into areas for input, processing, and output—echoing the flow of computation. I wasn't sure how to weave a story around them, much less how to translate them into functional play structures.
2021–2023
Planning & Design
The project moved into official planning, bringing on board landscape architects and a steering group of city representatives. Compared to creating picture books, this process felt new and complex, with different timelines and a multitude of small, critical decisions. It's fun to see how many ideas from 2020 survived into the finished design.
Spring 2024
Construction
Construction started, and it was absolutely wild to see the site take shape. The special play equipment arrived from Denmark, and soon, passersby could watch as a colourful computer tower and a giant keyboard took form.
Autumn 2024
Opening
Children swarmed the playground. They jumped, swung, crawled. They broke rules and came up with new ways to play. They collaborated and resolved conflicts. Maybe they even learned something. Any code I've written disappears into the infinite feed. But a playground will stubbornly stand for the next twenty years, pointing to big ideas in computer science.
2025
Curriculum
If the equipment is the hardware, what kind of software brings it to life? Together with educators from early childhood to primary school, we hosted workshops to develop over 20 activities that translate computing concepts into physical play.
Team
The project was created with the City of Helsinki, Landscape Architects Näkymä (Ana & Tiina), and Monstrum (Kasper) from Copenhagen, in close collaboration with local educators. A special thanks to city champions Hanna Harris, Jan Vapaavuori, and Emma Alftan.
What's Next
Expanding the Grammar
Ruoholahti proved one thing: children will play with computational ideas if you give them the right forms. Play has done this before. Fröbel's kindergarten gifts taught structure and pattern through the hands. Aldo van Eyck built a new playground grammar from a few repeatable elements and spread it across Amsterdam. Now the question is how to go from one playground to many—and from one topic to six.
Chips & Circuits
The physical architecture of computing: logic gates, transistors, and the silicon landscape beneath every device.
The Internet
Packets, protocols, and the hidden infrastructure that connects the world—made tangible through movement and space.
Artificial Intelligence
Pattern recognition, training data, and decision-making—ideas children can rehearse with their bodies before they meet them on screens.
Early Computing
Looms, punch cards, and the mechanical roots of the digital world. Computing before computers.
Synthetic Biology
Programming with living systems: DNA as code, cells as factories, nature as the original computer.
Quantum Computing
Superposition, entanglement, and the strange logic of the very small—translated into play.
Design Principles
How We Think About Play
Singapore's first playground designer, Khor Ean Ghee, insisted: “When the play elements don't move, the children cannot play. They sit down and take photographs. Only with things like swings and see-saws—that's when they really play!” We took this to heart.
At Least Eight Play Values
Every good playground should have at least eight distinct play values. Movement over spectacle. Each structure invites multiple ways of engagement—not a single, linear experience.
Soft Mastery
Sherry Turkle describes soft mastery as “the mastery of the artist: try this, wait for a response, try something else, let the overall shape emerge from an interaction with the medium.” But what if, instead of drawing a flowchart, you jumped through one?
Invisible Learning
Children engage with programming logic—sequence, selection, iteration—without ever calling it that. They strategize: If you're happy today, jump here. If not, jump here. They invent rules. They play robots.
Sense of Awe
I wanted kids to experience feeling both tiny and massive—like when jumping on a giant keyboard or crawling through the tunnel connecting the CPU to the RAM.
Recognition
As Seen On
Fast Company Innovation by Design 2025. Urban Design, Honorable Mention FastCompany
"The world's first coding playground." BBC
"Brilliantly bizarre!" Wallpaper*
"Helsinki dared to build a playground that isn't only about safety." Helsingin Sanomat
Math Power! Prize, Winner mEducation Alliance
Resources
Playground Curriculum
If the equipment is the hardware, the curriculum is the software. You don't have to visit Helsinki to try these ideas. Start with a sidewalk and a piece of chalk. Draw a grid. Invent a code. Walk it with a friend. Change the rules.
Developed together with educators from early childhood to primary school, the curriculum explores computing when it is physical, playful, and rooted in public space. It includes over 20 activities that map computing concepts onto movement and play, aligned with Finland's national curriculum.
- Asphalt Code: a choreography of movement-as-instruction. Children design a program with jumps, turns, and walks, then test it on a giant flowchart.
- Programmer Says: a logic game on trampolines introducing loops, conditionals, and debugging.
- Computer Tower: a physical input/output experience. Climb in as a data packet and slide out as output.
- Virus Tag: a new kind of tag game with challenges to discuss rootkits, trojans, or ransomware attacks.
Downloads
Watch
A Playground Worth a Thousand Programmes
A talk on how playgrounds can reimagine computer science education. Beyond Tellerrand · 2025 · 40 minutes.
Library
Inspirations & References
I love any project with its own library. Here are some of the thinkers, makers, and projects that shaped this work.
Thinkers
- Seymour Papert — Mindstorms
- Sherry Turkle — The Second Self
- Alexandra Lange — The Design of Childhood
- Loris Malaguzzi — Reggio Emilia approach
- Friedrich Fröbel — Kindergarten gifts
- Maria Montessori — Sensory learning
- Isamu Noguchi — Playground sculptures
Makers
- John Maeda — Human Powered Computer
- Taeyoon Choi — CPU Dumplings
- Khor Ean Ghee — Singapore sculptural playgrounds
- Aldo van Eyck — Amsterdam playgrounds
- Monstrum — Copenhagen play equipment
- Florentijn Hofman — Large-scale creatures
- Chaim Gingold — Building SimCity
Reports & Resources
- Arup / LEGO Foundation — Playful Cities Design Guide
- Global Designing Cities Initiative — Designing Streets for Kids
- Architecture for Children — architekturfuerkinder.ch
- Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam — Crochet playgrounds
- Yinka Ilori — Colourful public furniture
Writing
Project Notes
These newsletter entries document the four-year journey from first idea to finished park. The full archive lives on Substack.
- No. 21 – Playgrounds, Public Spaces, Architects for the very young Aug 2021
- No. 22 — Paris, Pattern Language, Kid City Sep 2021
- No. 36 — Play/Pause, My phone stuck its tongue out, Wingspan Mar 2022
- No. 65 – Playground abacus, Stochastic Parrot, Parallel Computing Dec 2023
- No. 76 — Playground construction, Worldbuilding, Jean Bartik May 2024
- No. 78 – Umarell, Star Stuff, A tinkering bibliography Jun 2024
- No. 80 – Booleans, Primeval numbers, Incomplete City Jul 2024
- No. 85 — Playing in the streets, Pop-up computing, Shelf space Oct 2024
- No. 86 — A playground to outlast the feed Oct 2024
- No. 87 — Playground process, The Anchor Song, Berlin next week Nov 2024
- No. 89 — A Playground Worth a Thousand Programmes Nov 2024
- No. 94 — Hopscotch, Nassi-Shneiderman Jan 2025
- No. 98 — The playground curriculum, Ted Nelson's Junk Mail Apr 2025
- No. 105 — Eight play values, Détour, Low in entropy Jul 2025
To learn more or discuss a playground project, write to linda@helloruby.com.