Course Spotlight: Grounds for Play
2026-10-08 • Caitlin Custer
WashU architecture students worked with 4th graders at Lift for Life Academy to build a modular obstacle course. Photo: Kate Munsch/WashU.
Can collaborative, practice-based learning generate more imaginative, inclusive, and responsive design outcomes? How can this way of learning strengthen connections between WashU and the local community?
These questions have been top-of-mind for Associate Professor Petra Kempf as she’s developed and led the seminar course Grounds for Play. The course brought architecture students together with fourth graders at Lift for Life Academy to ideate, design, and build a modular obstacle course.
“We live in an increasingly complex and rapidly evolving world, in which diverse forms of engagement are becoming essential in responding to technological innovations while navigating political and socio-economic uncertainties,” Kempf shared. “To address these challenges, I provide ‘serious play’ as an active process through which students construct meaning, negotiate relationships, solve problems, and develop shared experiences. In other words, play offers a different way of discovering and exploring the world. As Johan Huizinga observes in ‘Homo Ludens,’ play unfolds within a delineated space in which participants collectively consent to a shared set of rules that guide actions, choices, and meaning.”
Students started the course by developing a kit of parts that allowed for collaboration between groups and inventive thinking, and that also allowed the finished product to be assembled, disassembled, and transported easily. From there, they made interactive devices from cardboard and wood — shapes and forms that allowed for the adaptation and transformation of the obstacle course.
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
Students testing out their designs at WashU and at Lift for Life Academy
As the designs took shape, students from Lift for Life visited WashU to do some hands-on testing — balancing, jumping, sliding, and thoughtfully and joyfully planning their next move.
“It was so much fun collaborating with Lift for Life on this project,” Leah Roodhouse, a graduate architecture student, shared. “The students were energetic, intuitive, and gave great feedback! Working with young students was a great reminder that there can (and should) be fun and laughter at every step of the process. I can only hope that there is this much joy in every project I do!”
Kempf emphasized that engaging with play allows students to embrace uncertainty and chance, rather than always trying to control an outcome. “This creates an environment where unexpected situations and outcomes become opportunities for collaboration, fostering teamwork and encouraging students to value different perspectives,” she said. By engaging as co-creators, students are able to better understand each other’s experiences and perspectives, encouraging them to remain open to ideas different from their own throughout the design process.
Once the fourth graders had given their feedback, WashU students incorporated their experiences and created iterative models. At the end of the semester, students took the completed obstacle course to Lift for Life Academy for students to enjoy for years to come. Gifting the obstacle course to the children and school, Kempf said, “positions them not only as active contributors to the design process, but also as recipients of its outcome. In this way, the project extends beyond the context of the classroom and serves as a tangible representation of the shared experience.”
Grounds for Play is supported by a course grant from the school’s Office for Socially Engaged Practice. In the fall 2026 semester, the course will partner with Chesterfield Montessori School.