According to a report in the Jackson Heights Post, the Jackson Heights community suffers from a severe lack of children’s play facilities. For children, play is crucial to their health. Numerous academic papers have demonstrated that children without access to play areas will harm their health and intellectual development. Moreover, Piaget’s Cognitive Development showcases that children have powerful “microscopic” perceptions in elementary school, so they are always aware of things adults often ignore. However, the parents’ conventional use of the street limits the children’s ability to observe things. They no longer watch the “natural environment” provided by the street. In the Urban Tree Houses project, I wanted to amplify the “micro” perception of children. I used existing scaffolding and street trees, which are common and unused on New York streets, to build “urban tree houses” for the Jackson Heights community in a lightweight (visually transparent) and convenient (easy to make) manner. Children can exclusively experience the “nature of the street” through urban tree houses.
