School playground project enlightens design students

Students in Architecture Professor
Nils Gore’s
Design 301
class present models of lights
to members
of the Hillcrest School Advisory Board. The
third-year students are gaining
valuable experience while working
on a lighting
project for the school’s
playground.

R. Steve Dick/University Relations

Undergrads gain valuable experience while providing service to community

By Jennifer Kepka

When it comes to lighting a playground, a designer has many important components to consider. If that designer is in Nils Gore’s Architectural Design 301 class, there’s also a grade on the line.

This semester, Gore’s class has provided third-year undergraduate architecture students hands-on experience, designing and now building six light fixtures for the Ryan Gray Playground for All Children next to Hillcrest Elementary School, 1045 Hilltop.

“I never did anything like this when I was an architecture student in college, and I think it’s the right thing to do,” says Gore, assistant professor of architecture.

The project came about because Gore, whose daughter attends Hillcrest, sits on the school’s site council. Last fall, council members started discussing needed repairs and renovations for the playground, including the necessity of putting up lights. Gore volunteered his class to do the design and work on the lights.

Working 12 hours a week and meeting almost every day, the class of 20 — divided into six groups, with each group responsible for one fixture — has a deadline of May 6 to finish construction of their fixtures.

They presented models of their proposed lights to members of the Hillcrest advisory committee last Monday.

“They didn’t know what to expect, so they were surprised but excited,” said Candace Haines, a St. Louis senior in Gore’s class.

The lights for the Hillcrest playground will be a bit out of the ordinary: solar-powered, made from bunched steel and mismatched, with two sporting floating steel boxes and one light covered in a wire-framed creature.

This is no ordinary playground, however, and these cannot be ordinary lights. The Ryan Gray memorial playground was built in the early 1990s. Gray, often called the unofficial mascot for the national champion 1988 KU men’s basketball team, died in 1990 from a brain tumor he had fought most of his life. The playground, which is completely accessible, was dedicated in his memory.

Approximately $7,500 in community development grants was provided for the project from neighborhood associations.

Although third-year students are in the middle of technical training, Gore says that hands-on experience allows students a taste of real-world problems they’ll face in their careers, such as cost estimating, collaborating with peers and meeting community members. The class is something Gore hopes to re-create in the future, perhaps working on other school district projects.

“I’m a huge advocate of trying to test things out, not just doing everything in your brain,” Gore says. “This is a good way for students to synthesize all this material they’re studying.”

Haines agrees. “It’s an experience to actually do something, instead of working with pencils and paper.”

Thus lighting the playground that KU fund-raising helped build is no small task. At Monday’s meeting, Ryan’s mother, Kitty Gray, was present to review the proposed designs.

Haines said the designs seem to reflect the intention of the playground.
“I think the diversity of the lighting goes with the diversity of the school,” Haines said. “They feel like the money is well-spent.”