Hakes: Enjoying her dream job, Iowa City resident designs custom playgrounds with creative kids

When Lisa DeShano of Iowa City was growing up in a Detroit suburb in the late 1980s, her elementary school playground was a bare, flat section of asphalt and nothing else – no swings or slides and not even a merry-go-round.

Frustrated, she went to her school principal and asked for a real playground. The principal’s solution was to give her a soccer ball.

She went back later and asked again.

“She said it was too dangerous for boys and girls to play together,” DeShano said, “So she gave the girls jump ropes and put up a basketball hoop for the boys.”

That frustration may have lit a spark.

After earning her degree in architecture from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, DeShano worked in the architecture corporate world for awhile, then landed what you might say was her dream job.

DeShano ended up designing and executing large-scale playground projects for kids in all regions of the U.S., plus other countries such as Australia, India, Afghanistan, and Congo.

“It’s a part of my soul,” she told me. “Sometimes I think I am the luckiest person to work with the most generous people in the world, volunteers and kids.”

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Creating innovative playgrounds for all

As a senior designer for Play by Design, DeShano brings bare lots to life with unique, accessible, creative playground complexes for zoos, city parks, schools, big companies, and residential developments. To date, she’s helped design some 250 playgrounds around the world, ranging from about $75,000 to $2 million.

She loves the designing part, of course, but admits her real passion is her connection with the dedicated community people she encounters. That includes the young children DeShano always meets with to hear their ideas, plus the 100 or so volunteer adults who often roll up their sleeves to build these large-scale playgrounds.

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Partnering with the target audience

The process begins with collecting ideas from kids. “After all, they are the true playground experts,” DeShano said.

She spends one day on-site, meeting in the morning with the children who would benefit from the project. After that, it’s an afternoon of roughing out ideas and designs, then an evening social event to discuss a plan of action.

Meeting with the kids, she said, energizes her because it is always an eye-opener.

“Kids are so creative,” she said. “They might say they wanted a roller coaster, a hot tub, or a trampoline. Of course, we have to put their ideas into something safe.”

DeShano says she encounters “lots of future architects” in her job.

“They don’t hold back,” she said. “It’s amazing to see them unbound. If they want to make things that look like intestines, dragons, dinosaurs, or robots we just say ‘Sure, why not?’”

After coming up with the design, DeShano returns to her office to finalize a budget and develop something that can be built by volunteers and meets current safety and accessibility guidelines. Then it’s meeting with parents and community volunteers to help them fundraise, collect volunteers, prepare the site, order materials, and collect tools.

DeShano’s own backyard speaks to the kind of creativity we’re talking about.

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Building a child's dreamworld at home

Several years ago, her stepson Sebastian Cochran, the son of her partner, Jim Cochran, helped her design a play structure there when he was only about five years old. Young Sebastian suggested combining Noah’s art with a tree house. She created just that, using recycled lumber, cedar siding and other materials. It’s still a popular attraction today for the next generation of neighborhood kids.

Although some communities pay contractors to erect their playground, others either go with all volunteer labor or a hybrid version of volunteers and professionals.

“The playgrounds are built in just six days,” she said. “If someone was out of town for a week and came back they would think it fell from the sky.”

She said the volunteers work hard, bond, learn new skills and enjoy creating something terrific for kids.

For example, in Enid, Oklahoma, the volunteers used skills they learned from the playground project to tackle the rebuilding of a local church that had been destroyed by fire months later.

“They said, if we can build a playground, we can rebuild a church,” reported DeShano. “That’s confidence.”

She points out that modern playgrounds today are not only works of art with respect to design, but also when it comes to use by differently abled children and adults. Ramps are prominent for the benefit of those in wheelchairs, kids with autism enjoy rocking or spinning structures and non-verbal kids can use picture boards to indicate how they feel or what they would like to try. Kid-size tunnels have been enlarged so grandpa or grandma might take part in the play.

“Parallel play for kids is also important,” she said. “Incorporating low monkey bars for kids in wheelchairs alongside higher bars for taller kids.”

Collaboration builds community pride

DeShano likes the idea that custom playgrounds are competitive with manufactured playgrounds because of the volunteer builds.

“It’s a lot of work,” she said, “but gives people a chance to be part of something that is bigger than themselves.”

She has a standard pitch for adults reluctant to take the plunge:

“Remember when you were a kid and wanted the coolest playground in the universe? Now is your opportunity to give your kids that same sensation.”

DeShano remembers coaching soccer camps as a young adult and pondering leaving her architecture job in the corporate world.

“My mentor said that I needed to contact this playground company because he thought the job was meant for me,” she said.

Now, nearly two decades later, it appears he was right.

More information on these playgrounds can be found at the Play by Design website:  https://pbdplaygrounds.com/

Richard Hakes is a columnist for the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Hakes: Iowa woman designs custom playgrounds alongside creative kids