D.C. is rethinking parks, following an international trend of building temporary creative “play spaces,” which eschew cookie-cutter shapes for those built by architects and designers who create art to bring a neighborhood together.

Nonprofit ArtPlace America recently awarded the District of Columbia Office of Planning a $300,000 grant to hold an “Innovative Urban Play Space Competition” which will seek innovative and creative art-based designs for five play spaces for children and adults alike in unexpected sites throughout the District.

D.C.'s population has grown more than 5 percent since April 2010, faster than all but two of the 25 largest cities in the country. All that growth means new apartments, homes and condos. It doesn't always account for parks.

Thor Nelson, urban designer with the office, says that indeed, with growth comes growing pains.

“Whenever you have rapid growth, it’s difficult to plan for, so we’re seeing a lot of emerging areas that don’t have the facilities to properly encourage high density sustainable living,” Nelson says.

Neighborhoods like NoMa, Bloomingdale and H Street NE are underserved in terms of park space – and the Planning Office is potentially looking at putting these "playable art" spaces there.

The planning is still in its infancy. Nelson says the office is currently mapping out potential areas. The next step will be choosing sites. “It’s about creating more livable places that could attract a diversity of people … the principle of space design starts with if you can appeal to families and children, you can attract the rest of them. That’s what we’re trying to achieve, creating more universal spaces that improve livability by using play as the vehicle.”

Five sites will be chosen, and the next step in the process is reaching out to stakeholders in neighborhoods — Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, main street organizations, Business Improvement Districts — to find groups that could aid in the upkeep of the sites, since the planning office will have little oversight of the areas once the play sites are built. The office is also looking for philanthropists to fund the installation of the sites, because the grant will only fund the competition.

After choosing sites, the office will solicit proposals from designers and engage youth and stakeholders in the kinds of sites that neighborhoods would find appealing. Because there is not much public space left owned by the District, it may work with private partners who will allow these spaces for shorter periods of time, such as condo developers who are sitting on land that will be developed in five years, but in the meantime are empty lots.

“There are no publicly owned sites in Mt. Vernon Triangle, and the last public site is being offered for redevelopment. If that is stalled for four years, that might be a place for a playground, because there are no other park sites,” says Patricia Zingsheim, director of revitalization and design with the D.C. Office of Planning. The same goes for NoMa, where there is no longer any publicly owned land because of sales to developers.

Zingsheim says that though the play spaces will have to meet the same safety standards as a traditional playground, it's the artistic component that will separate the five sites.

“The other aspect of it that sets it apart is the variety, we don’t expect these to be formulaic and off-the-shelf from a playground catalog,” Zingsheim says. “There might be parts that are purchased from a catalog, but we except them to be innovative and engaged in diverse populations.”

For the past five years, D.C. has built a portfolio of “temporary urbanism,” with “temporiums” that changed storefronts into showcases of local artists' work, and parklets, which turned public space into seating areas on 14th St. NW. This is the city's first foray into play structures, but Nelson says the city's previous temporary urbanism experiments set the city up well to succeed in bringing communities together around these play spaces.