Rocket Park Mini Golf At NYSci In The News

Inspired by Michelle Obama’s recent support for community-built playgrounds, the September/October issue of  I.D. Magazine explores the concept of “design as it relates to play.” The article, “Recess, Rethought” showcases a number of landscapes that innovatively merge play and learning, including Rocket Park Mini Golf at the New York Hall of Science.

The thematic golf experience, designed by SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership, is recognized for its intuitive comparisons between the flights of golf balls and rockets, and for its “radically colored landscape,” which appears clearly in a full-page photo with the Hall’s rockets standing like proud sentries in the background.

This cover story, written by Scott Briggs, Senior Associate of Museum Services at SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership, provides a designer’s view of the thematic mini golf course at the New York Hall of Science. If you’ve been to Rocket Park, then you know how it puts fun in physics on its putting greens, which are really putting blues. But did you know its designers tested plywood prototypes with kids, and that its lunar-like landscape of colorful recycled rubber visually balances the Hall’s towering icons of the 1964 World’s Fair?