There's more to playgrounds than swings and slides.

II

To those who dislike playgrounds, because they like to play.

III

IV

W AS T H I S GOOD-LOOKING BOOK WR I T T E N J U S T FO R Y OU? A LEGEND EXPLAINED Most of the books regarding architecture (and playgrounds) that make it to publication are picture books. They are formatted and selectively worded so as better grace your coffee table.

Consider them bathroom readers with very good images. It is the minority of books about architecture that are published and written, by and for architects. Architectural prose isn’t filled with technical jargon, yet it tends to address things in a way that often omits key context and leaves the non-architect, and even many architects adrift. Of course, this phenomenon isn’t unique to architecture. It seems professions can’t help but develop their own vernacular, and unique styles of prose, (think lawyers) either out of a need for specificity, or for the purposes of exclusivity (lawyers again).

In architecture’s case, such exclusion is particularly unfortunate. Architecture isn’t hidden away in a lab, it isn’t some minuscule gadget inside another slightly less minuscule gadget, and it isn’t some incredibly complex, yet so incrementalyou might as well not notice it technological advance. We inhabit architecture. Almost everyday, pretty-much all the time. Shouldn’t we be able to address our surroundings with a minimum of understanding and insight? Assuming we somehow were able to discuss our urban fabric in ways that went beyond the obvious, would we pay more attention to it?

Wouldn’t we demand better?

It is with such intents in mind that the following text embraces a dual nature. It is the hybrid of a layman-esque picturebook, and the wordy, critical, slightly more esoteric kind of V

document which occurs when actually dissecting architectural thought.

The result of such hybridity is a document with a continuity that, though not in doubt, is sometimes hiccupped by colorful fragments. These are passages with an ulterior motive, or a specific audience in mind. Of course, all pages are for everyone, but some pages, like those on a blue background, focus upon content specific to architecture. Yellow pages, for their part, frame the chapters of the main text, while those passages on a pink background are truly left-field left-overs: existing to give added context. With this legend in place, as well as a secondary text providing added context, it’s my hope that this book can be read in either a bathroom, or in an academic setting, as I believe this would enrich the experience of either reader.

And what better program to address these audiences simultaneously than the playground, itself historically confused as to whether it be landscape or structure, toy or building, highbrow or low-brow, commercial or art, architecture or not. As the following will demonstrate, even the most ignored and ubiquitous of urban spaces are worth a second look, and can be discussed with specificity, curiosity, and manifesto-scaled ambition.

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VII

VIII

W H Y I N V E S TI G A T E T H E T Y PI C A L A M E R I C A N PL A Y G R OU N D ?

ABSTRACT If anything ought to be artfully designed and playfully utilized, shouldn’t it be the playground? And yet, as any brief visit reveals, the typical playstructure’s technicolor shell hides a homogenized experience composed of didactic activities and repetitive challenges. The contrast between the playground’s extravagant formal promises and its actual program couldn’t be more dramatic - so why do most parents seem oblivious to its failings, and why, for that matter, are designers and architects currently so unconscious of its potential?

These questions are here introduced via the notion of the fast-playground.

By grouping the playground within the ranks of previously prefixed products, such as fast-food and fast-homes1, the fastplayground intends to summarize the state of the playstructure as a conflicted commodity. It will be used as a platform by which to explain how the playstructure has become a victim of convenience, risk-adversity, and its own modes of representation. At its core, this notion aims to demonstrate how the playstructure has figuratively and literally adapted fast-food tropes, and how this has forced it to evolve in a way that runs counter to its two fundamental mandates: providing play, and enriching the social and communal identity of the setting it inhabits.

1

Fast-House

Coined by John Brown, author of What`s Wrong With This House, A Practical Guide to Finding a Well Designed and Sustainable Home, the term fast-house is attributed to a type of suburban home that is, like fastfood, both standardized and homogenized.

BROWN, JOHN; NORTH, MATTHEW. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS HOUSE? . 2011.SLOW HOME STUDIO. (KINDLE LOCATION 364)

2

Contemporary Architecture

As the french architect Francois Edouard defines it, ‘the contemporary’ is an attractor point to which everything in a given cultural field, at a given time, gravitates. As Roger Connah, director of graduate studies in architecture at Carleton University defines it, the contemporary is a state that can be used to define something that is on the precipice of being culturally accepted and understood. This thesis posits that the contemporary is the sum of both these defintions. It proposes that a design or an architecture that is emminently of its time will also by default be ahead of its time, or, at the very least, present an ideal foundation for the radical.

FRANCOIS EDOUARD, IN CONVERSATION AT THE CARLETON SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE . 2011.

ROGER CONNAH, IN CONVERSATION AT THE CARLETON SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE . 2010.

That being said, the following should not simply be considered a critique: this document also harbors the broader ambition of understanding, and moving towards a contemporary IX

architecture2. Being an exaggerated reflection of current architectural semantics, the playground also provides an opportunistically dysfunctional program through which to explore the profession, and, by that same token, an ideal program with which to attempt expanding architectural agency in unanticipated ways.

As a whole then, this book proposes that if skyscrapers were the sought after commission of modern architects, museums the dream job of the past decade, then playgrounds define the ideal project for a contemporary breed of architect: one that gains its agency, not only by making global icons, but also by advantaging local expressions; that designs, not only for the usual 2%, but also for the 98% that can most benefit from his services; and, most important by far, that looks for opportunities where architecture can leverage its impact, if only because it is applied where it is least expected.

While advancing the humble playground as a lever of professional magnitude might seem ambitious, architecture’s storied yet typically forgotten relationship with the playstructure provides ample precedent. The playground’s child-centric program predisposes it to become a nexus of contemporary social forces, and an expression of society’s aspirations. A look at past playgrounds shows it to have often been at the forefront of radical agendas, progressive movements, and architectural progress. It is time it took on this role once again.

X

XI

XII

C O N D E N S I N G A LT E R I T Y F R O M T H E S U BU R B T O T HE PL A Y G R OU N D A NOSTALGIC AVANT-PROPOS The settling of this book within the playground is the result of a meandering process that had, as an initial layover, an exploration of topics at the intersection of the North American suburb and aesthetics. This initial document was to be an investigation of those things taken for granted, in the hopes that deconstructing what might seem banal or natural, like gabled roofs, or the north American obsession with grass, could bring about a sense of foreignness and distance, where before there had only been familiarity and nonchalant inevitability. The decision to investigate the suburbs was due in large part to the heightened effect that the reader’s intimate acquaintance with this space could provide. After all, what could strike closer to home than demystifying the signs1 and assumptions that ground the residential typology within which over half of North Americans live?

It is not only the familiarity of suburban codes that would have made peeking behind its facade so effective, but also the character of its simulations. While the typical residential suburb subscribes to a certain orthodoxy, through which itneurotically enforces a kind of middle-class conformity, its gently curving roads, ornamental flora, idyllic street names, and purposely indefinite occupation of space, nonetheless attempt to pretend at the uncontaminated nature it replaced.

Many of the suburb`s fundamental design principles aim to romanticize the our experience of space - our desire for

1

Sign

A sign is a semantic unit of meaning that implies a connection between itself, as signifier, and the object or concept to which it is referring: the signified.

2

Near and Far

The expression, ‘near and far’ is in reference to sociologist Georg Simmel’s (18581918) text, The Stranger (1914). According to Simmel, the distance afforded to judges and priests due to their aloof and supposedly impartial positions preludes a paradoxical sort of intimacy. Chat roulette provides a more current example of this phenomenon.

Talking with unknown strangers online has the contradictory effect of creating a setting within which people feel (very) comfortable exposing both their feelings and their body.

Applied to the playground, the notion of ‘strangeness’ overtures a reversal of the playstructure’s critique. It advances that what people find most attractive about the playground is not its supposed intimacy, but rather the fact that it is anything but intimate.

JEAN BAUDRILLARD, MARC GUILLAUME. RADICAL ALTERITY. LOS ANGELES: SEMIOTEXT, 2008. (P, 26)

XIII

3

Simulacrum

Jean Beaudrillard (1929-2007) identifies four different sign-orders, the last of which is the simulacrum: a state in which there is no longer any distinction between reality and representation. As Beaudrillard expounds in the preamble of Simulacra and Simulation : It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say, of an operation of detering every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short circuits all its vicissitudes BAUDRILLARD, JEAN.SIMULACRA AND SIMULATION.GALILEE, 1981. (P, 4)

XIV

mobility, individuality, and a sort of adventurous freedom.

No one is fooled, not really, but as vinyl-faux-wood siding, plaster-faux-brick façades, and spray-painted grass can attest, the condition of propriety in the suburb is that nature, the marginal, if not everything, be falsified to some degree.

The tropes of familiarity and simulation, as so far described, are also the foundation of the playground`s attraction. As it so happens, the playground`s own design objectives are in many ways a microcosm of the suburb’s, much as the latter is itself a denser manifestation of broader North American themes. Though it is often the source of local pride, as well as the confidante of childhood play, the current playground nonetheless treats everyone to the same franchised response.

Like the suburb then, it can be exposed as both intimate and distant, both ‘near and far’2. Moreover, where the desire for nature, for marginality, and for adventure was tacitly implied within the suburb, the playground`s signs promise a kind of jungle themed exoticism with explicit intent. It is therefore a more conflicted simulacrum3, within which play and the exploration of children are constantly in dialogue with the simulation of adventure. In other words, if it is difficult to establish where exactly the facade ends, and the suburb most would presume to know and inhabit truly begins, then it is entirely impossible to distinguish between the representation and the reality of the playground. Such has the effect of coming full circle. By being so false, the playground provides a rich premise for speculations, re-appropriations ,and, ironically enough, the `real adventure’ it has so emphatically and inauthentically promised.

XV

0 1 THE PLAYGROUND

abstract

V

past-playgrounds

5

avant-propos

IX

playground semantics

37

WHY INVESTIGATE THE TYPICAL NORTH AMERICAN PLAYGROUND?

CONDENSING ALTERITY FROM THE SUBURB TO THE PLAYGROUND

c o n te nt s WHAT`S IN THIS BOOK?

XVI

XII

A HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY PLAYGROUNDS

TRAVELS INTO HYPER-REALITY

2 3

A FAST-GOOD

PROJECTS

a fast introduction 59

the siteless playground

107

community, a proposition

radical playgrounds

115

INTRODUCING THE NOTION OF A CONFLICTED COMMODITY

COMMUNITY AS COMPRISED OF INPUT AND OUTPUT

63

DECONSTRUCTING AND PRESERVING THE PLAYGROUND

the placeless playground HOW TODAY`S PLAYGROUND HAMPERS COMMUNITY

the playless playground WHY TODAY`S PLAYGROUD IS JUST NO FUN

a fast conclusion THE FAST PLAYGROUND AND THE ARCHITECT

AN ANTI-CATALOGUE CATALOGUE

67

the acadecap playground EXPANDING ARCHITECTURAL AGENCY THROUGH A BUILT PROJECT

83 99

127

endnotes bibliography

149 155

XVII

PART 1

GETTING TO KNOW THE PLAYGROUND

3

RADICAL/ECLECTIC

AMERICAN PROGRESSIVE

EVO LVES INTO

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE

T HE PL A Y G R OU N D AS C O N T E M P O R A R Y C AT A L Y S T

OM E BEC

POST-WAR (REVIVALIST) R E AC T

S IN

TO

S

ARTISTIC DE

V

V

S INTO

TO

VE OL

S IN

DE

VE OL

MODERN

CLASSIC (COMMERCIAL)

4 1880

1910

1940

1970

2000

A HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY PL A Y G R OU N D S PAST-PLAYGROUNDS 1

Urban Reform Movement/Progressivism

As the current playground model is now so ubiquitous that it has acquired an air of inevitability, a summary of past playgrounds is required - if only to dispel the notion that it is the only standard available. This section therefore provides a brief chronological overview of some notable playground concepts, advocates, and designers by grouping them into broad historical categories. It attempts to focus on those typologies which summarized, if preceded, the culture and architecture of the time, and pays particular attention to the trends that led to today’s characteristically banal playstructure. It will also, by providing contrasting examples, begin to illuminate just how much of a missed opportunity the current playground archetype has become, thereby setting the stage for a future critique.

Taking place during the early twentieth century, the urban reform movement (a.k.a. progressivism) was initiated by the growing middle class, and had an impact on almost all aspects of American living. It can be broadly summarized as a counter force to industrialisation`s consequences: congestion, density, lack of parental guidance, and corporate abuse. Though the movement formed its own political party in 1912, it benefited from strong political support from both the left and the right.

HOFSTADER, R. (1966). THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 1900-15. NEW YORK: PRENTICE HALL TOUCHSTONE.

2

Susan G. Solomon

Susan G.Solomon , Ph.D, is the author of multiple works concerning architecture and playgrounds. American Playgrounds Revitalizing Community Space makes strong arguments for the redesign of the current playground model.

AMAZON. SUSAN G. SOLOMON. N.D. SEPTEMBER 2012.

Progressive Playgrounds The playground came into existence riding the wave of progressive change that swept America at the turn of the 19th century. Though street games like hopscotch, stickball, tops, and marbles already informally occupied the leftover corners of the city, purpose built playstructures quickly gained legiti5

2

Play Leaders

Play Leaders/Directors were fundamental to the progressive play movement’s vision.

The Playground Association of America wanted its play leaders to have the same professional status as college-trained social workers and to be an example of impeccable moral character. In the eyes of the play movement’s organizers, such people were to serve as a kind of surrogate role model for those children with unsuitable immigrant fathers. The ideology these leaders were to adhere to can be summarized by an Ohio play director, according to which, the playground was not so much an amusement park as “a play factory” - always on time and churning out the “maximum product of happiness”. Play leaders weren’t all drill sergeant though. As Hetherington, professor of education, and author of the play leader’s training program put it.

He needs social psychology and sociology in order to put himself in the place of those whose spontaneous and instinctive activity he is to lead. In a country with diversity of interests, mixture of national traditions, and variety of social conditions which this democracy has, the student of play needs to be a student of society for we are coming to understand that play is one of the means ,perhaps the most important means, by which society functions.

On top of his symbolic and instructional value, the play leader was also playground superintendent, as well as responsible for day to day clerical tasks. “By 1915 there were 5,000 full time play directors in the United States.”

(CAVALLO 40-42)

6

macy as a means of providing children with a safe and programmed past-time. As Dominick Cavallo, author of Muscles and Morals succinctly states, “the playground was an alternative to unsupervised street play.”1 The early playspace’s purpose was therefore as much salubrious as preventive: a child without a structured occupation was generally thought to be a danger to himself, a danger to others, and at risk of delinquency. If anything then, the original playground was simply a way to round up the communities would-be miscreants into a single controlled space.

The transition from informal playscape to officially sanctioned municipal playground had many drivers. Predominant among them was the urban reform movement`s1 desire to curtail the chaos of America`s immigrant society. Forged from the cultural momentum provided by groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Anti-Saloon League, most playgrounds were “built in a city`s most congested immigrant colonies”2(fig.1). It follows that these proto-playstructures were demarcated by sturdy fences, highly supervised - the amount of money spent on play supervisors was often twice as much as that spent on play equipment3 and did their best to engender patriotic behavior. As Susan G.Solomon2 explains in American Playgrounds Revitalizing Community Space, the means of americanization were varied and resulted into “extensive programming that included paid play leaders3 and well-orchestrated activities such as folk dancing and dramatic presentations.”4 Day long festivals and mini patriotic parades were also common(fig.2).

The last thing progressive playground advocates wanted was for children to “nonchalantly pass the time of day on playgrounds.”5 These early playstructures were anything but fun-centric, and had little to do with the escapism of casual

1. AS THE POVERTY GAP PLAYGROUND ILLUSTRATES, EARLY URBAN PLAYSTRUCTURES WERE FAR FROM ENTERTAINING. THE AIM OF THESE SPACES WAS NOT TOO AMUSE CHILDREN BUT TO MOLD THEM INTO PRODUCTIVE MEMBERS OF SOCIETY.

1889 2. IMMIGRANT CHILDREN LEARNING PATRIOTISM ON A NEW YORK PLAYGROUND, LIKELY DURING ONE OF THE P.A.A.`S PLAY FESTIVALS. 3. RINGS AND POLES, BRONX PARK DEPICTS THE KIND OF HIGH RISK CHALLENGES A GYMNASIUM INITIALLY INVOLVED.

7

1908

1910

4

Playground Association of America

Reformers were afraid that the play movement would be unable to sustain itself without the creation of a national association.

The Playground Association of America was therefore founded in 1906 to help facilitate goverment lobbying, as well as the patronage of playgrounds by wealthy individuals and corporations. It became the National Recreation and Park Association in 1911 so as to broaden its appeal.

(CAVALLO 32)

5

Luther Gulick

The son of a reverend, Luther Gulick (1892– 1993) had initially intended to follow in his father`s footsteps. Unsure about his calling, and yet struggling to find an alternative, it was on a Sunday afternoon in 1885 that he began to wonder if “physical education might have the same uplifting relation to the body as religious education had to the soul”. It is this line of questioning that eventually led Gulick to become the first president of the P.A.A..

(IBID 33)

sports and recreation. On the contrary, these playgrounds resulted from a desire to moraly improve upon the leisures provided by commercial amusement parks, and movie theatres.

Due to such intents, and its location amongst broken down tenements, the typical ‘progressive’ playground was in fact ”drab and prison like”6. Further concretizing its underwhelming character was the prevailing desire to develop children`s physical and psychological character as efficiently as possible7. This led play leaders to utilize gymnastics, a militaristic model of development, as a template. The outcome was the gymnasium: a daunting blend of sandboxes and boot-camp. (fig. 3) The mixture of playground advocates which comprised the growing play movement, at the turn of the century, though diverse and often at odds with each other, can be argued to have as a common purpose the socialization of young Americans through different forms of physical activity. Though many of their efforts were grounded by the thesis that muscle control, and the production of moral individuals were in some way linked, it wasn`t until these advocates coalesced to form the Playground Association of America (P.A.A)4 under the leadership of Luther Gulick5, that the connection was made between team games and spiritual fulfillment. It was Gulick`s aim to move beyond the previous Germanic and individualistic model of playground play, towards a unified and systematic spiritual theory of play that placed gamesmanship above all other qualities.

According to the P.A.A’s most accomplished theorist, the playgrounds within which every child is encouraged to be “a unit on a larger, mutually responsible whole, all reach a higher and more significant stage of individual freedom than is possible on the unorganized free-for all”8 alternative. The play

8

1916 4. A GAME OF BASKETBALL TAKING PLACE ON MANHATAN`S CARNEGIE PLAYGROUND. IT`S WORTH NOTING THAT ONE OF LUTHER GULICK`S STUDENTSWAS INSTRUMENTAL IN INVENTING THE GAME.

leaders sanctioned by the P.A.A. therefore emphasized the fact that youths would win or lose as a group, a community, a country. As Joseph Lee, the succeeding president of the P.A.A. describes it, each boy should feel “to the marrow of his bones how each loyal member contributes to the salvation of the rest”.9 This ideology was inspired from observation. Playground advocates had noticed that children, especially adolescents, though often dismissive of parental authority, formed their own gangs, which in turn demanded a certain kind of social instinct that transcended childish egotism. The P.A.A. therefore had its play leaders harness the nascent social tendencies of these so called ‘modern tribes’ in a controlled man9

ner within the playground as a means to counter what they considered the moral void caused by the lack of efficacious parenting. As Joseph Lee theorized, the playground was the ideal avenue by which to correct the fact that the “city dweller may have no neighbors, or at least no neighborhood, - no group of any sort in which he feels a membership”10.

To this end, playgrounds in large urban centers went as far as to initiate systems of self-governance. “Playground ‘citizens’ elected mayors, chiefs of police, judges and juries”11 capable of carrying out sentences, such as banishment, to those who violated the rules or didn’t submit themselves to the unity of the playground. Though somewhat Gestapo like in character, in Gulick’s opinion, the result of these techniques wasn’t to enforce a mindless conformity, but again, a more nuanced concept of freedom that he explained as the “recognition and joyful acceptance of relationships.”12 Self-governance on the playground was to replace the intervention of adults, not aid in its application.

Like most organizations grounded in progressive culture, the P.A.A. was not without its detractors. Many immigrant parents interpreted its attitude as a form of American condescension and many youths reacted badly to the patriarchal and authoritarian attitudes of play leaders. In 1910 Gulick began to question whether the playground alone could ever satisfy the ideals of the P.A.A. despite a steady growth in the number of organized playgrounds. More to the point, the P.A.A. had a cash flow problem. The solution undertaken was its incorporation into the school curriculum; a direction that many organizers considered less than ideal. Public schools were innately competitive, relegated most students to the role of spectator, and were generally ambivalent to the aims of the play movement despite their oftentimes progressive mandates.

10

The transition of responsibility from the P.A.A.( by then renamed the Playground and Recreations Association of America) to public schools, and other public organizations was nonetheless inevitable. Not only had the P.A.A. lost momentum come the first world war, but such a development was in effect what it had sought all along. The organizers of the play movement and the P.A.A.. had always seen themselves as pioneers - contemporary individuals - whom, though happy to explore and experiment, were also just as happy to pass on their on their knowledge and authority to the state. As Cavallo explains “ they wanted government to be responsible for children’s play, and by 1920 reformers had succeeded in making organized play a concern of public policy makers.”13 The playground`s inception into matters of public policy gave the government and the public more of a stake in its construction, to the effect of making safety synonymous with its viability. New York, then the world capital of playgrounds, had already replaced all of its supposedly unsafe gymnasium type playgrounds by 1912, and, ironically enough, by the end of the first world war there wasn’t more than a handful of this challenging and militaristic model of play left standing anywhere in the United States14. More importantly, the ideological void left by the dissolution of the P.A.A. , in tandem with the modern theory then trending, would set the scene for the familiar amalgam of swings, see-saws, and slides known today.

Modern Playgrounds The typical 1920’s playstructure preceeded and interpreted modernist aesthetics in varied ways. An initial comparison between the trending playground and the modernist architectural6 tendencies then taking center stage can be made under the heading of the ‘free plan’. As the most important 11

6

Modern Architecture

Though often confused with different forms of contemporary architecture, not too mention multiple forms of neo-modernsim, Modern Architecture is here identified as the movement of architecture occuring at the turn of the 20th century. Some of its common themes include the notion that form follows function, the elimination of unecessary ornamentation, an optimistic perception of technology, a belief in classical ideals, proportions, absolutes and the related notions of the grid and modularity.

MODERNISM WIKI, 2011.2011.

7

The Five Points of Architecture

Le Corbusier`s five points of architecture include pilotis, the free plan, the free facade, the horizontal sliding window, and the roof garden.

8

Robert Moses

Robert Moses(1888-1981), the so called master builder of the 20th century had an impact of a Haussmannian scale upon New York, and by proxy, all other North American cities. His construction projects include, 416 miles of parkways, 13 bridges, 3 zoos, 10 golf courses the 1939 World’s Fair, Riverside Park and Jones Beach. Not adverse to carving through historic neighborhoods with modern highways, or building ghetto’s of low-income public housing, his impact remains, to say the least, controversial.

LOPATE, PHILLIP. RETHINKING ROBERT MOSES. 2004. 12 OCTOBER 2012.

12

modern precept outlined by Le Corbusier’s five points of architecture7, the latter argued for the liberation and rationalization of space.

The principles canonized by Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (fig.5,6) for instance, were also applied en mass to outdoor playstructures. The grounds of these playspaces were open, concrete, hard-surfaced, decontextualized affairs; its play apparatus didactic, devoid of ornament, and mono-functional (fig.7). This now classic typology was also advantaged by the modernist inclinations of powerful champions within America’s municipal bureaucracy. During his tenure as the head of New York Parks and Recreations,15 Robert Moses8 built over 650 such standardized playgrounds.

It is likley in reaction to the playground’s sudden homogeneity that unconventional - though undeniably modernistic - visions of playspaces began to surface in the late 1930’s.

Prominent among these new alternatives were Isamu Noguchi’s designs which substituted the desire to mold moral citizens with the desire to mold an aesthetic awareness. It was Noguchi’s opinion that abstract-art, by accommodating undirected and plural functions, would boost the creative value of the playground, while the ability to play would, in turn; add to abstract-art’s phenomenological and societal impact.16 Like the man himself, the end results were hybrid visions, more landscape than structure(fig.8-10).

It is upon the premise of such radical ambitions that Noguchi would later collaborate with Louis Khan on New York’s Adele R. Levy Playground. Both Louis Kahn and Noguchi had in common the desire to reinterpret modernism’s free flowing space towards a kind phenomenological monumentalism. Like most of Noguchi’s playgrounds, the latter was

1928 5,6. LE CORBUSIER’S CANONICAL VILLA SAVOYE WAS INTENDED TO ILLUSTRATE HIS FIVE POINTS OF ARCHITECTURE.

1916 7. THE SARA D. ROOSEVELT PLAYGROUND’S OPENING WAS QUITE A CELEBRATON, AND LIKE MANY PLAYGROUND OPENING’S OF THE TIME, IT WAS PUBLICIZED THROUGH LIVE TELEVISION BROADCASTS.

never built. In fact, being ahead of their time and often considered too dangerous, Noguchi’s playscapes suffered repeated rejections by Robert Moses and Moris. (The former’s successor to the throne of New York Parks and Recreations.)

To this Noguchi remarked that, “the things that do not happen are as valuable as the things that do happen,”17 and as Susan G. Solomon affirms, the totality of the Noguchi9 - Louis Kahn10 project- that is to say, its successful “intermingling of play spaces with activities”18- allowed the proposal to affect an entire generation of young designers both in America and Japan

9

Isamu Nogushi

Isamu Noguishi’s (1904-1988) sculptural work, can best be understood as a reflection of his dual origins. As he himself describes it:“ The problem is that I don’t think I fit in.

I’m not understood either way; over here [ in America] I am Japnese and over there [ in Japan] I am American.” His conflicted sensibilities are well illustrated by by his playscapes’ hybridity.

MASSAYO DUUS, PETER DUUS. THE LIFE OF ISAMU NOGUCHI. PRINCETON: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2009.(7)

Somewhere between Noguchi’s concrete landscapes and Rob13

7,8. DISTRAUGHT BY CLAIMS THAT PLAY MOUNTAIN , HIS FIRST FORAY INTO PLAYGROUND DESIGN, WAS UNSAFE, NOGUCHI DESIGNED A SMOOTH SURFACE PLAY AREA: THE COUNTOURED PLAYGROUND.

1933

1941 9. THE RIVERSIDE PLAYGRUND

WOULD UNDERGO MULTIPLE ITERATIONS, FOR OVER HALF A DECADE. IT WOULD NEVER BE BUILT.

1965 10. THE MITAKE CENTER PLAYGROUND,

BY HAYASHI, IS A JAPANESE PLAYSCAPE WHICH SEEMS TOHAVE BORROWED HEAVILY FROM NOGUCHI’S TECTONIC AESTHETIC.

1970

ert Moses standardized metal structures, stands le Corbusier’s Rooftop Playground: the archetypal modern playspace. Built on top of his Unité d’Habitation Marseille, this playground (and its derivatives on top of copy-cat buildings) is essentially a microcosm within a microcosm. L’Unité d’Habitation Marseille, itself a canonical modern building, was intended to be a utopique, optimistically futuristic, self-sustained world.

It follows that its rooftop playground, due to its smaller scale and child-centric program, enacts a purer concentration of modernism’s optimistic, and future-focused aspirations. In fact, the playground also sets a precedent for the aspirations of Le Corbusier’s own architecture. Not only does the rooftop playground replace the rooftop garden, a logical and emminently modern - yet nonetheless clear deviation from his five precepts of architecture; but the forms it uses, such as its curvelinear smoke stacks, foreshadow his more mature brutalist work. Though l’Unité d’Habitation Marseille is sandwhiched between a modern and brutalist esthetic, its rooftop playground’s heavy yet playful character is echoed by, for instance, La Tourette : arguably Le Corbusier’s most masterful brutalist building.

10

Louis Kahn

Kahn was Professor of architecture at Yale and Pennsylvania, and responsible for the Salk Insititute, and the Phillips Exeter Academy Library among many other works. In partnership with Noguchi, Kahn had to temper his love of the monolithic with opportunities for playful sensory exploration.

Formal traces of his work on the Adele Levy playground made their way into some of his unbuilt designs; most notably within the council of Islamic theology.

(ARCHINET/KHAN)

Post-War Playgrounds Come the 1940’s, wartime austerity gave playstructures an opportunity to reinvent themselves once again via the Adventure Playground. Initially conceived by Danish landscape architect. C.Th.Sorensen, this typology was essentially a monitored junkyard comprised of donated building scraps. (Fig. 18) Its objective was to offer an “antidote to the political control that affected most other aspects of current existence.”19 For perhaps the first time in playground history, children were not only free to choose what they wanted to do, and when to do it, but also freed from the ignominy of ‘simply playing’.

In other words, the adventure playground finally shifted em15

1952 11. L’UNITÉ D’HABITATION MARSEILLE.

12, 13, 14, 15. DIFFERENT ROOFTOP PLAYGROUNDS ON TOP OF INDIVIDUAL UNITÉ D’HABITATION.

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Lady Allen of Hurtwood

Marjory Allen, (a.k.a, Lady Allen of Hurtwood) (1897-1976) was a successful children’s rights advocate and largely responsible for introducing the adventure playground to England. Her books include, Design for Play (1961), New Playgrounds (1965) and Planning for Play (1968). It was known for her and her assistants to forage through the ruins of bombed out London for play safe junk.

SELLECK, DOROTHY. “A TRIBUTE TO: A NO-NONSENSE LADY.” 2007.

LADY ALLEN OF HURTWOOD MEMORIAL TRUST.

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phasis away from the perception of play as a whimsical waste of time, to the idea of play as a means of empowering individual agency and exercising creativity.

As the champion of this playground in both England and America, it was Lady Allen of Hurtwood’s11 opinion that this playground concept provided an opportunity for children to “come to terms with the responsibilities of freedom.”20 In fact, Adventure Playgrounds would come to pit children at the forefront of post-war reconstruction, by providing a space within which they could enthusiastically interpret the rubble of war. (Fig. 16,17) In doing so, this playground typology would play an important part in both de-victimizing children and forcing policy makers to expand the nature, role, and rights of childhood.

Unfortunately, though successful throughout areas of northern Europe, and even Japan, the Adventure Playground never made definitive headway in North America. As Arvid Bengtsson, author of Adventure Playgrounds recounts, while the reception of this typology by American university students and faculty was enthusiastic during the 1950’s, the country’s “ litigious atmosphere would nonetheless pose a serious obstacle to the concept.” 21 (Though notable exceptions, such as the Berkeley Adventure Playground, exist to this day,.)

The devastation of the second world war also provided new prospects for those designers desiring to reinterpret the role of the playground vis-a-vis the urban fabric. What Sorensen 16,17. THE LOLLARD ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND AND THE ENGLISH ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND WERE COMPRISED OF RUBBLE.

1946

1940

18. SORENSEN’S EMDROP ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND, THE FIRST “OFFICIAL” ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND.

19. CEDRIC PRICE’S INTERACTION CENTER IS AN INFAMOUS EXAMPLE OF RADICAL ARCHITECTURE, SO WHY DOES THE LONG STANDING ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND WHICH INSPIRED IT, LANGUISH IN OBSCURITY?

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1976

1953

1955

20,21,22,23. SOME BEFORE AND AFTER IMAGES OF VAN EYCK`S PLAYGROUNDS THROUGHOUT AMSTERDAM.

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Aldo Van Eyck

Aldo Van Eyck (1918-1999) was an architect from the Netherleands whose more notable works include the Amsterdam‘s Municipal Orphanage (1955) , the Hubertus House (1971) and Pastor Van Ars Church (1963) He was co-founder and wordsmith of Team X, a member of CIAM and one of the proponents of Dutch Structuralism.

STRAUVEN, FRANCIS. ALDO VAN EYCK: THE SHAPE OF RELATIVITY .

ARCHITECTURE AND NATURA, 1998.

24. VAN EYCK`S AMSTERDAM ORPHANAGE WAS A LABYRINTHIAN FORM, WITH MULTIPLE PATHS AND AND NETWORKS OF DIFFERENT CLIMATES, GENERATED AND CONTROLLED BY INDIVIDUAL USERS.

would do for broken and otherwise discarded scraps, Aldo Van Eyck12 would do for war-torn and otherwise discarded space during his involvement with the Amsterdam Playground Movement. This architect’s designs aimed to not only provide a space for play, but also had the broader goal of placing children and neighborhood democracy at the centre of urban planning. His playgrounds avoided pandering specifically too younger age groups by creating an urban atmosphere inclusive of all public life. The results were usually clear, uncluttered, simply shaped spaces that read as more of a plaza than a playground.

The avant-garde nature of Van Eyck’s Amsterdam playstruc-

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tures can perhaps best be understood in juxtaposition with the more conservative renewal projects of the time. Instead of being monuments conceived and existing in isolation, such as Picasso, and Moore’s public statues, Aldo Van Eyck’s public works were “site specific sculptures”22 - hybrids of both formal traditions and nascent urbanism. In their way ,then, they were a critique of post-war modernism. The beginning of Van Eyck’s ‘playground phase’ coincides with his cofounding of Team X13. His playgrounds are miniature functionalist heresies, - bifurcated New Babylons14, which, as Alberto Lacovoni, author of Game Zone argues, extended and preempted Team X’s theoretical and built projects in their quest to “question the dogmas of the functionalist city”23.

Though Van Eyck would end-up designing over 700 playgrounds thanks to Amsterdam’s post-war playspace revival, he was by no means singly responsible for its long lived success.

As Diane Lefaivre and George Hall, authors of Ground-up City: Play as a Design Tool put forward, the construction of these public works, itself spanning over 20 years, “revolutionized the design of playgrounds”24 if not public space. As they explain, their unique and innovative nature can be summarized by three characteristics:

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TeamX

Team X (1953-1981) was a group of young architects united due to their divergence from the opinions expressed at le Corbusier’s ‘Congres Intenational d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). It included, Aldo Van Eyck, Jaap Bakema, Alison and Peter Smithson among others. It held, as a common argument the belief that “that the appropriate pattern of associations between people and functions cannot be predicted.”

LACOVONI, ALBERTO. GAME ZONE. SWITZERLAND: BIRKHAUSER, 2004. (45)

14

New Babylon

Constant Nieuwenhuy`s (1920-2005) architectuural models, paintings, sculptures, sketches, and texts, for New Babylon (1959-1974) described a post-revolutionist, anti-capitalist, and anti-functionalist utopia.

Over the span of several years, his multimedia designs became a jungle of ever transformable buildings and megastructures populated by Homo Ludens; `the man of play`, who had discarded the bourgeois notions of work and civic responsiblity in his quest for leisure.

SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN (JULY 2006) ON ARCHITECTURE : EXTRA-LARGE IN THE NEW REPUBLIC

‘they were not imposed from above by a city administration, but part of a people power participatory process involving the citizens and the Urban Development Department of Amsterdam; they were not placed on a piece of land cleared for that purpose but inserted in interstices within the living urban fabric; they were designed not as individual units , but as part of an extended polycentered network of playgrounds.’25 19

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Creative Playthings Company

Creative Playthings is a brand with a long history of innovative design founded by Frank Caplan and Bernard Barenholtz in 1951. (Though it was proceeded by Frank Caplan’s toyshop of the same name, which had been churning out toys since 1945.)

(SOLOMON 23)

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Amy Ogata

Amy Ogata’s research explores the history of Modern European and American architecture and design. Her upcoming book, Object Lessons: Creativity and the Material Culture of Postwar American Childhood investigates how material goods contributed to the concept of the creative child.

OGOTA, AMY F. AMY F. OGOTA. 2012. 2012.

Artistic A large percentage of American playgrounds during the 1950’s was saturated with political and religious subtext, relegating play to a form of civic indoctrination reminiscent of the playstructure’s origins. Religion’s sudden post-war resurgence led clergy, as well as those who ran park programs, to preach an association between spiritual and recreational fulfillment. It was in reaction towards such a “Christian notion of play”26, that the Creative Playthings Company15 decided to form Play Sculptures in 1953. This new division would bring a set of well known sculptors, (including Noguchi,) into the industrial design process in order to market the brand to a broader public. (fig. 26,27) As art historian Amy Ogata16 notes, Creative Playthings made use of a timely double code: its product “was creativity, pitched to middle and upperclass Americans as a way of combating the conformity of the 1950’s (all the while) proclaiming America’s uniqueness.”27 The Play Sculpture’s division was only part of the Creative Playthings Company’s overall ‘high-art’ marketing strategy.

It’s cofounder, Caplan, had long been building relationships with the art world. He had, for instance, engaged an official from the Museum of Modern Art to help in the selection process of future products since 1946. Such decisions would pay devidends during the early 1950’s. Recreation Magazine, one of the leading publications advertising playgrounds at the time, displayed mostly jungle gyms and swings, to the effect that when Creative Playthings introduced its bold full-page Play Sculpture advertisements, it suggested a transformation of both playgrounds, and the representation of playgrounds.28 Though it is difficult to say just how much of Caplan’s initial success was by design, his advertisements were propitiously timed. The first wave of baby boomers was now going

20

25. BROWN’S STEEL CORD DESIGN, JIGGLE RING, SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN DIRECTLY INSPIRED BY HIS EXPERIENCE AS A BOXER.

1954 26,27. ABSTRACT SCULPTURAL PLAYGROUNDS PRODUCED BY CREATIVE PLAYTHINGS AND DESIGNED BY SCULPTOR EGON MOLLER.

1953 1953

to school, and as an added bonus, the threat of polio was quickly diminishing, while culturally, the notion that playgrounds “did not denigrate the art, they elevated the child”29 had been well and widely received by the public. More importantly, the playground was once again being viewed as critical space by which to define urban programming. As an article in a 1954 issue of Arts and Architecture summarized ”Playgrounds for children are an essential part of modern city planning, and the quality of their equipment of vital importance.” 30 Though symbolic of the times, the dramatic abstract sculptures that were Creative Plaything’s hallmark weren’t the only alternative and art inspired playgrounds being developed during the 1950’s. Critical of the student work being done by Princeton’s architecture students and playgrounds in general, Joseph Brown, himself a sculptor and an ex-boxer, hoped to provide new forms of playground play by once again expounding upon the relationship between physical activity and art. According to Brown, the playstructure was an opportunity to illustrate causal relationships in both a psychological and tactile fashion(fig. 25). He wanted to “demonstrate cause and effect as part of normal behavior.”31 In the long run, it was the intent of his ‘play communities’, to nurture cooperative citizens through challenges that emphasized the harmonious and/or chaotic consequences of interdependant action.

Eclectic Due in large part to the relationship it cultivated with highart, the playground would enter the 1960’s as a respected field of design, allowing it to experience an unprecedented, and as yet unique period of experimentation, and innovation.

The growing popularity of earthworks18 throughout the art world, new theories in child-psychology, a rebirthed focus on

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22

children’s design, widespread anti-functionalist tendencies in architecture - all of these cultural elements combined to make the 1960’s zeitgeist playground friendly. Though numerous designers contributed to this golden age, two architects can be considered to have led the charge in America: Richard Dattner, and Paul Freidberg. Being critical of the modern playstructure’s use of isolated and didactic incidents, both architects came to the conclusion that playgrounds should be comprised of linked and integrated spaces. Thus, while both architects developed their own playground language, their individual designs were nonetheless comparable. The 1960’s playground, much as certain 1960’s architecture, flirted with tectonic and ideological eclecticismf and syncretism. Dattner’s19 (fig. 29) and Freidberg’s20(fig. 30,31) playgrounds therefore forgo Van Eyck’s spatial clarity, or Noguchi’s material consistency in order to connect and blur one modular experiment after another. The results are seemingly unfinished, contextually unique playspaces with busy urban presences.

The formal eclecticism of these works is not simply an aesthetic, but rather the inevitable result of an engaged design process. Much as ecletic architects (fig. 32); Paul Friedberg, and Dattner engaged their would-be playground’s community in an organic consultation that would give the residents an opportunity for design input over an extended period of time. Though transgressive in their use of materials and to the extent in which they empowered the community, Dattner’s and Friedberg’s playgrounds were a long ways away from the radical21 ambitions that came to shape, and be shaped by certain radical playgrounds during the 1970’s.

What is perhaps the apogee of the radical playground, was constructed in the early 1970’s by the Bath Arts Workshop.

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Eclecticism

Eclecticism here refers to the semantically pluralistic and often participatory architecture of the early 1970`s carried out by the likes of MBM and Ralph Erskine. The materials these architects made use of, and their patchwork, idiosyncratic application recalls Dattner`s and Friedberg`s overlapping organizational modules. Like these New York playgrounds, Eclectic architecture was the result of a slow, community based, and palimpsestual process of design. Ralph Erskine was even known to set up a temporary office within the neighborhood he was designing for.

JENCKS, CHALRES. THE LANGUAGE OF POST MODERN ARCHITECTURE. NEW YORK: RIZZOLI INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATIONS, 1977. ( 105)

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Earthworks

Coined by Robert Smithson, Earthworks (a.k.a land art) is a movement that sought to link both art and nature. Its works were often massive in sale, the materials unprocessed and left to decay `naturally`. The movement emboldened multiple playground designers such as Noguchi and Jacques Sgard. (And vice versa.)

LAND ART WIKIPEDIA

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Richard Dattner

Richard Dattner is the principal of Dattner Architects and author of Design for Play.

(1969) He was in large part responsible for the legitimization of the playground: playspsaces had long been the purview of activists and advocates, but the strength of Dattner’s work made them - for a while at least- a sought after architectural commission. His works include the Water Playground, Joseph Cerrato Park, The Ancient Play Gardens, and The Adventure Playground.

LENDERMAN, ALFRED. CREATIVE PLAYGROUNDS AND RECREATION CENTERS. NEW YORK:FREDERICK. A PRAEGER, 1959.

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Paul Friedberg

Landscape architect Paul Friedberg is author of Play and Interplay A Manifesto for New Design in Urban Recreational Environment(1970), as well as Handcrafted Playgrounds: Designs You Can Build Yourself(1975) He is also the head of Paul Friedberg and Partners. His design process was notable for its empirical approach: Paul Friedberg was known to intently study his past playgrounds in order to learn from their failures and successes. His playstructures include, the Carver House Playground, the Buchanan High School Playground, and the Jacob Riss Playground.

RANDL, CHAD. BIOGRAPHY OF M. PAUL FRIEDBERG. 2005. 12 OCTOBER 2012

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Radical

The term radical is here applied much as Baz Kershaw, author of The Radical in Performance defines it: “The radical is not just fredom from oppression, repression, exploitation - the resistant sense of the radical - but also freedom to reach beyond existing systems of formalized power,”.

KERSHAW, BAZ. THE RADICAL IN PERFORMANCE. ROUTLEGE, 1999.

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This playspace seems to have been defined by many of the desires that have historically shaped playgrounds. Like the progressive playgrounds at the turn of the century, it was constructed to provide an immediate and pragmatic means to integrate Bath’s underprivileged immigrant population; much as the Adventure Playgrounds built at the end of the second world war, as Grant Peterson, author of Theatre Applications: Locations, Event and Futurity explains, it represented “a space to build physical structures like huts and tree houses [ in order ]... to construct a sense belonging”32; and much as the Dattner’s and Friedberg’s playgrounds, it intended to make people cognizant of their own potential as stakeholders of their community. The Bath Playground’s radical nature then, is a question of degree: most of the playsructures so far observed have been in some way radical, the Bath Playgound simply took its role as a counterspace somewhat farther than most playgrounds. Inherent in most of these previous playgrounds is a sense of freedom: of being liberated from some form of oppression. The Bath Playground; its forts, fires, games, theatre, and sex though, sought to harness this empowerment through different expressions of transgression.

Given its lineage, it comes as little surprise that the Bath Playground and its many activities were anchored by different forms of participatory theatre. The playground even had its own faux-political council, to the effect that when the mayor of Bath came to visit, he was greeted by his costumed doppelganger and made to participate in a staged political coup - essentially usurping himself. Though symbolic, such lighthearted forms of social deviancy, even when buffered by the playgrounds allowances, allowed the participants to transcend social boundaries and “dislodge fixed notions of ‘self’ and ‘other’, promoting new possibilities of citizenship.”33 It’s interesting to note that a similar pseudo-political structure ex-

30. DATTNER`S PLAYGROUNDS TENDED TOWARDS AN AD--HOC BLEND OF BOTH FIXED AND LOOSE PARTS. THE ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND ( A.K.A. THE DANGEROUS PLAYGROUND) CONSISTED OF TIMBERED ZIGGURATS, STEPPED PYRAMIDS, AZTEC WATERCOURSES, TUNNEL NETWORKS, TREEHOUSES, ROPE BRIDGES AND, YES, ZIPLINES. IT HAS RECENTLY BEEN REFURBISHED

1966 28,29. FRIEDBERG’S JACOBSON RISS PLAYGROUND INCLUDED A SPRAY POOL, AN AMPHITHEATRE AND AN ELABORATE STEPPED GARDEN. THE OVERLAPPING NATURE OF THESE PROGRAMS WAS INTENTIONAL: FRIEDBERG AIMED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE EFFECTS OF CROSS AND TRANSPROGRAMMING. 31. RALPH ERSKINE`S BYKER WALL UTILIZED A MIXTURE OF MATERIALS IN A CLUTTERED SEMANTIC MANNER. IT USED BRICK IN THE LOWER FLOORS, ABSTESTOS CLADDING IN THE UPPER ONES, PAINTED PRIVATE DECKS IN GREEN AND CIRCULATION IN BLUE. IT ALSO ALLOWED FOR A GOOD DEAL OF UNTAMED NATURE AT THE BASE.

1972 25

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1974

isted in early progressive playgrounds; an overlap which has the contradictory effect of underlining the contrast between the ideologies of progressive playgrounds at the turn of the century and progressive/radical playgrounds in the 1970s.

Though in both cases, this structure helped create a sense of communal belonging, the progressive playground’s political appointments were intended to inculcate, while Bath’s were intended to subvert.

The radical nature of the Bath Playground can also be illustrated in juxtaposition with Adventure Playgrounds. Both playground typologies were intended to be ephemeral. Adventure Playgrounds were generally dismantled at the end of the season as this is pragmatic (all the space is then occupied) and further engages the children by providing a dynamic setting. The ephemeral character of the Bath Playground though, was fundamental to its radical nature. The replacement of old structures by the new, was integral to the functioning of the playground and the methods by which such change took place were as important and semantically laden as the construction of the play apparatus. Recounting how the Bath Playground’s wooden constructs were set ablaze, Jacqui Popay, one of its cofounding play leaders concedes, “Yeah, children like to light fires . . . we had an angry neighbor about that”.34 Perhaps the most transgressive and aspect of the Bath Playground was its lenience towads sexual behavior. The Victorian belief in childhood’s sexual innocence was at the time being contested by progressives and radicals who saw children as sexual beings. The Bath Playground demarcated its progressive stance in regards to these sexual politics by tolerating, if encouraging sexual experimentation. As long as an individual child’s behavior did not put others at risk, Jacqui and 26

Brian Popay, the informal leaders of the playground, chose to interpret sexual behavior as a means of individual expression.

Though not without risk, an argument can be made that such radical outlooks allowed the playground to attract, affect, and embolden its underprivledged participants by giving them the tools to subvert their own marginalisation.

Closed in 1978, the Bath playground leaves behind a relatively positive legacy of radicalism. By employing theatre techniques and forms of ‘radical engagement’, Grant Peterson holds that the Bath playground helped develop young citizens and urban communities. Curt Smith, who along with Roland Orzabal formed the group, Tears for Fears, also credits the playground with the successful integration of the community as well as the nurturing of young artists- including himself. By liberating its participants from standards of etiquette, as Smith confirms, “The Adventure Playground gave... underprivileged kids..[a] first real taste of the arts as a form of expression”35. All in all, the LittleWood playground presents a timely, and so far unique peak in regards to engaged, radical, and contemporary playgrounds.

Radical Devolution / Commercial Evolution While the mid 1960’s and 1970’s saw the playground promoted and critically discussed through numerous artistic publications and design competitions, the connection between art and play that had been so advantageous in helping it garner public attention, was at that very moment faltering. In 1963 Creative Playthings started to rethink its promotional strategy and introduced relatively realistic playground apparatus such as stage coaches and firehouses.36 It was the opinion of Bernard Barenholtz, Creative Playthings ‘other’ cofounder, that there need be “a happy balance between the realistic and the abstract.”37 By the middle of the decade architects 27

and sculptors responsible for unique and generally non-representational designer playgrounds were feeling the pressures of diminishing demand. The Philadelphia Art Commission’s tumultuous ‘non-purchase’ of one of Brown’s playgrounds in 1965 summarizes shifting playground perceptions. To be paid for by a municipal ‘Percent for Art’ clause, the project was never realized once the city determined that a playground could not be a piece of art. By the early 1970’s, the overall opinion of the American public was that play and art had nothing to do with each other 38.

The purchase of Creative Playthings by CBS in 1966 can be considered to signal the beginning of corporate consolidation in the ever more profitable field of children`s toys and educational products.39 The variety of playground equipment suddenly narrowed, as smaller, often artist owned playground companies were swallowed by their larger peers. This led mass produced items to once again fill the advertisements of landscape magazines. As ease of production became the most important design factor in playground design, the 1970`s also saw the extinction of exotic play elements such as netting and concrete. Constructs made of wood remained popular for a time, until the fact that they splintered as they aged suddenly made them unsafe and unacceptable. By the end of the decade, post-and-beam playgrounds made of plastic and metal had acquired dominance of the American market.

Existing playgrounds suffered in the 1980`s as insurance companies became burdened with an increasing number of lawsuits, the cost of which they passed onto local government. Unable to pay their liability insurance, municipalities were forced to close down their most popular playstructures.

Meanwhile, government bodies once thought to be immune from suits suddenly began finding themselves exposed.40 In 28

1975, the New York State Court of Appeals held the City Board of Education responsible for an injury incurred on school property when school was not in session. Soon thereafter, the Chicago Park District incurred a $9.6 million injury settlement, following which it removed all spiral slides, monkey bars, and merry-go-rounds from its playgrounds.41 This litigious ascendency has continued to this day.

Considering it to be their civic duty, or perhaps sensing an opportunity, the American Society for Testing and Materials, the International Play and Equipment Manufacturers Association, and the American Association for Leisure Recreation, as well as many other associations and consumer advocacy groups saw fit to publish and constantly update their own playground guidelines throughout the 1990`s. Playground safety standards have gotten tougher with time. The recommendation of the Canadian Standard`s Association come in a 200 or so page document that defines everything from the minimum diameter of handrail rungs and netting grids to the maximum height of upper body devices42.

Though not legally binding, and devoid of any liability, these documents restrict playground design. Bound by their liability insurance rates, parks commissions and school boards could only chose those playgrounds that best met the encouraged standards. In other words, the lengthy manuals, and standards that come with playstructure elements, while not legally binding, have nonetheless become both a weapon for the injured party, and a shield for the city- making their homogenizing application just as default. Though exacerbated in America, a similar trend can be seen worldwide. In England for instance, the Health and Safety Work Act of 1974 and the Children’s Act of 1989 had the same effect on the playground’s historical trajectory. Stricter risk assesments and 29

maintenance, spelled the end of most D.I.Y. and Adventure Playgrounds.43 The sudden peak of consumer advocacy went hand in hand with the overprotective tendencies of boomer parents in the 1990’s. The hovering of helicopter mothers and fathers has played a large role in defining the playground. Even though death by injury diminished by more than 50%, and crime rates dropped significantly from 1980 to 199044, this latter decade saw the advent of KinderCords (kid leashes) and an end to free-range children. Once again, this has been a sustained trend: “the percentage of kids walking or biking to school [in America] dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2009”.45 The playground has proven to be both an instigator and a product of what sociologist Ulrich Beck terms a ‘risk society’: a phase of modern development burdened by a hyper-awareness and heightened fear of danger.46 Expanding upon Beck’s notion of a risk society, it need be noted that, more so than an expanded awareness of risk, the playground has been affected by a dimished ability to assess said risk. While David Ball, author of Playgrounds - Risks, Benefits and Choices reports that there is one playgroundrelated death occuring every three to four years, and about 40, 000 equipment related injuries every year in England, and yet he also notes that such numbers should be of little concern when taking into account the injuries and deaths occurring outside playstructure environments47. It seems that those deaths occuring within a playground tend to be more widely publicized and for some reason, more tragic than they would otherwise have been, if they had occured outside of the playstructure’s confines. Compounding this confusion are the often dubious statistics concerning injury rates. A 2001 study by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission notes 30

147 children to have died from playground related accidents from 1990 to 200048 which in comparison with Ball’s study, presents a suspiciously high per capita playstructure mortality rate- that is, until the fact that it includes data from children up too fourteen years of age is taken into account. as solomon notes Teens who are injured in the playground are unlikely to be using the equipment properly, in fact the Public Playground Safety Handbook, written by the same U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, defines school age children, (the oldest classification of children which should be allowed on the playground), to be a maximum of 12 years old.49 Misleading statisitics continue to be aided by the fact that it is difficult to define the difference between a minor scrape and a serious injury, and often challenging to decide whether an injury was the consequence of equipment design or the misuse of said equipment, or had nothing to do with the equipment at all. The result is an escalation in safety standards and playstructure standardization.

As it stands, then, the typical North American playground, if most playgrounds across the world (barring some contemporary and fairly ubiquitous Northern European and Japanese playstructures,) are rarely considered as spaces of urban consequence beyond their ability to (potentially) amuse children, let alone spaces worthy of innovative design or artistic merit.

Instead, they consist, more or less, of the same devices that existed in the 1930`s. As Paul F. Wilkinson, author of Innovation in Play Environments commented over 50 years ago, “There has been little evolution in the standard playground.

Today`s playgrounds look similar to those of 50 years ago.”50 In a way, this programmatic endurance endows the playstructure with a colorful retro look and a nostalgic ambience, while 31

on the other hand, it underlies a markedly long-lasting combination of disregard, prejudice, and homogenization. The playground survived the collapse of post-war modernism, the collapse of post-modernism, and the 2008 collapse of the housing market - all without any notable re-invention. As will be illustrated through comparisons with fast-food and fasthouses, this longevity has transformed the playground into the semantic equivalent of a wax museum, or, in the context of the suburbs; a kind of decor, not unlike the sprinkling of flowers and grass that denote the traditional frontyard.

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T R AV E LS INTO H YP E R - R E A L I T Y PLAYGROUND SEMANTICS The playground’s current expression is here described via comparisons to both fast-food and suburbia. Few other commodities have had as profound and conflicted an impact upon North America’s cultural landscape and, more to the point, both these goods happen to share not only physiognomies, but also a history with the playstructure. The playground is one of the atomic elements of today’s suburban landscape, while also enduring as one of McDonald’s more innovative architectural features. These geographic proximities have allowed intents and signs to echo between these products and the playstructure, setting the stage for the exploration of superficial as well as fundamental principles. The following will therefore utilize the descriptions and observations pertaining to these more studied goods as a means of revealing the current playground, while also holding the playstructure as a mirror to current architecture.

The playstructure has often been the beneficiary of private sponsorship, most commonly from brands like Pepsi (fig.

33,34) which aim to both promote their image, while gaining access to young and therefore potentially lifelong customers.

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2011

32.-33 JERRY’S LIBERMAN’S PEPSI COLA PLAYSCAPE WAS DESCRIBED AS “A CHILD’S GARDEN OF PLASTIC DELIGHTS”BY LIFE MAGAZINE. SPONSORED BY PEPSI LIBERMAN AIMED TO DESIGN A CHEAP AND MALLEABLE PLAYGROUND USING REPURPOSED INDUSTRIAL MATERIALS.

34. SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES CAN SHARE THEIR NEED FOR A NEW PLAYGROUND ON THE PEPSI TUMBLR. THE PROJECT WITH THE MOST VOTES IN 2011 WAS THE ATTAWAPISKAT PLAYGROUND. IT WAS AWARDED A $25 000 ‘REFRESH’ GRANT.

Fortunately, the playstructure is also a part of the urban and suburban fabric that has generally been left untouched by explicit corporate signs. The lack of advertisements upon its plastic skin is seen by parents and playground advocates as a positive and surprising feat, especially considering the fact that ‘‘a sizeable, fully installed piece of play equipment can have a price tag of $75 000 to $100 000’’ (not including landscaping)1. The playground’s relatively sponsor free existence is doubly as astonishing when taking into account the extent to which corporate signs have otherwise been able to infiltrate everyday life. Given that Coke banners hang from high-school hallways, and McDonald’s supports everything 40

from after-school music programs2 to advanced math classes3, the playstructure’s virginal plastic skin gains an almost sacred aura. The irony here, lies in the fact that while positioning itself as too delicate a space for logofication, the playground has done everything it can to better suit the realities of the market. Unlike fast-food, but akin too suburban homes, the playground’s burden of signification falls largely upon its own physical manifestation, pushing it to irrevocably blur the line between product and representation, reality and simulation. The following delves into these adaptive semantics under the headings of Neo-Regionalism, Hyper-Realism, and Convenience by contextualizing them through comparisons with the way in which fast-food and fast-houses entice their customers and emphasize value.

Neo-Regionalism1Regionalism As the compulsory presence of smiling white children within manufacturer catalogues illustrates, the playground tends to present itself as a cheerful slice of american optimism and western modernity. Though not as often discussed, its internationally manufactured components are as potent a symbol of the homogenizing forces of globalization as any Iranian fast-food outlet or Chinese suburb. How the playstructure goes about achieving consent though, cannot be explained by standardization or modernization alone. If anything, the playground attempts to hide its impersonal and universal nature by cultivating the perception that it is a friendly and unique neighborhood space. As Landscape Structure’s company website bluntly attests, “Theme playgrounds truly help set your community playground and park apart from the others!”4 These intents have lent the playstructure a doublecode2Rbest understood in comparison to the neo-regional2 strategies perfected by McDonald and epitomized by suburbia.

1

Neo-Regionalism

Neo-regionalism as defined by Reiser Umemoto in the Atlas of Novel Tectonics, exposes “traditional regionalism...(as) the true international style... (which) only becomes recognizable as an ideology when its opposite (globalization) emerges.’’ Historically, this brew of themed regionalism* first flourished in the 1950s, as a reaction to a floundering modernism. Projects like Walter Gropius’ US embassy for Athens(fig. 35), or the flagship Hilton hotels for Cairo, Athens, and Istanbul exemplify the kitch image making of the time. The 1951 Hilton hotel in Istanbul for instance, had an entrance dubbed the flying carpet, turkish tiles recalling ottoman architecture, and a “tulip room reserved exclusively for women, as in a harem.” The intents of such patchwork historism is summarized by Hilton himself, in his autobiography, Be My Guest. As he explains, “Each of our hotels is a ‘little America.” In other words, these constructions, were, American/Modern to their core, and simply adapted to the context in an effort to patronise local sensibilities or pretend at exoticism.

LIANE LEFAIVRE, ALEXANDER TZONIS. CRITICAL REGIONALISM. MUNICH: PRESTEL, 2003. (33)

2

Double-Code

As architectural historian Charles Jencks describes in The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, double-codes are “an eclectic mix of traditional or local codes with modern ones.”

JENCKS, CHARLES. THE LANGUAGE OF POST MODERN ARCHITECTURE. NEW YORK: RIZZOLI INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATIONS, 1977.

(133)

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35. AN EARLY EXAMPLE OF NEOREGIONALISM, WALTER GROPIUS’S US EMBASSY IN ATHENS BASED ITSELF UPON THE PARTHENON IN ORDER TO PAY HOMAGE TO ITS CONTEXT. 36. A STREET IN DISENY’S CELEBRATION TOWN: A REDUCTIVE VISION OF SMALL TOWN AMERICA.

1961

1995 37. A SACRAMENTO PLAYGROUND PROCLAIMS ITS CHINATOWN CONTEXT THROUGH CURVED SHADERS 38. THIS NATIVE THEMED PLAYROUND , MAY OR MAY NOT BE EVOQUING A GEOGRAPHIC THEME. WHAT IT DOES DO THOUGH, IS REDUCTIVELY SUMMARIZES INDIAN CULTURE.

39. THE TOMOL INTERPRETIVE PLAYGROUND AND ITS HYPER-REALSM PAYS NEO-REGIONAL HOMAGE TO ITS CALIFORINAN HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT THANKS TO TACHTED ADOBE HUTS AND JUMPING DOLPINS.

3

As J.L. Kincheloe, author of The Sign of the Burger, explains, McDonalds “customizes its foods for particular locations, while concurrently clinging to the signifier of Modern advanced America.”5 In most cases McDonalds wins hegemonic consent, not so much by emphasizing bigness or corporate America, but by “attaching its signifiers to prevailing belief structures such as family values, patriotism, and nostalgia for a culturally homogeneous small-town America.”6 The results are reminiscent of suburban architecture, and its many flavors: Texas Ranch, Californian, French Provincial, Colonial, Victorian, or whatever the appropriate reference may be given the desired faux-history. The reactionary cultural reductivism that defines the playground’s signs though, is best illustrated

by New Urbanism3. The latter not only positions itself as an alternative to the default suburb, but it does so, like McDonald’s, through a nostalgic conception of small-town America that never was. The neighborhoods this type of urbanism champions therefore have less to do with locality, than the region as historically defined by the marketing of housing developers.

New Urbanism

New Urbanism is a recent surbuban alternative that promotes walkability, connectivity, increased density, sustainability, and mixed development. As illustrated by Andres Duany, Jeff Speck and Elizabeth Zyberk’s book on the topic, Suburban Nation, the ambitions of the movement are anchored in a traditional neighborhood model. The small town historicism it aims for is exemplified

by Disney’s Florida located, Celebration Town(fig. 36). The latter presents the Disney version of the american dream - including white picket fences, and a penchant for colonial facades. Everything in the town is planned not only physically, but temporally as well. As Andres Duany notes “ the main street of celebration not only provides restaurants for four different price ranges but a bar that is required to stay open until the last movie goes out.”

ANDRES DUANY, ELIZABETH LATER-ZYBERK, AND JEFF SPECK. SUBURBAN NATION. NEW YORK: NORTH POINT PRESS, 2000. (170)

In the playstructure’s case, due, perhaps, to the intimate nature of its scale, and the homey nature of its program; the coexistence of modern and regional codes has been quietly carried-out with little debate or critique relative to the polemics generated by fast-food and the suburbs.(fig 37,38,39) In fact, the playground often expresses exaggeratedly kitch forms of neo-regionalism, as it has the added camouflage of childhood simulation: if its pseudo-local ornamentation seems a little too reductive, even for the average minivan parent, it has the excuse of being directed towards children. Unlike the suburbs or fast-food outlets, the playground is currently accepted as a fictional space: a Disneyland whose cultural infantility is 43

1970 40. THOUGH FORGOTEN MCDONALDLAND’S AESTHETIC IMPACT IS STILL DISCERNABLE IN TODAYS PLAYGROUNDS. PCITURED BEING FILMED, IT ILLUSTRATES AN EN ENDURING GENESIS.

forgiven on the basis that adult reality is located somewhere else, in the ‘real’ world. Thus does the playground combine universal plastic elements with superficial localizing morphologies like Chinese roofs, and Adobe huts without endangering its cultural innocense.

Hyper-Reality If anything set the precedent for the kitch, disneyfied playground, and current hyper-realities4, it is McDonaldland (fig.40). In the late 1960’s the explosive expansion of McDonalds was accompanied by a plan to build a theme park, tentatively named Western World, that would epitomize McDonald`s brand of modern Americana. The plan never came to fruition, “instead of investing in a large theme park 44

the company (McDonalds) built small PlayLands”7 that were more neighborly and less obviously a form of American colonization. The look and feel of these playscapes was in large part based upon the series of commercials and television episodes taking place in McDonaldland; a fictional universe largely designed by former Disney set designer Don Ament.

The selection of a this ex-Disney employee was inevitable, as Schlosser explains, “the corporate culture of McDonald’s seems inextricably linked to that of the Disney empire, sharing a reverence for sleek machinery, electronics, and automation.”8 It comes as little surprise then, that its own playspaces became just as sleek, synthetic, and reductively optimistic a vision of America.

A more recent McDonald advertising campaign titled Our Food, Your Questions, features behind the scenes excursions meant to debunk some of the negative rumors that pertain to its food and operations; like that of the meatless beef patty or the whole chicken, chicken McNugget. The most popular of these narratives takes the viewer through the step by step process of preparing an aesthetically pleasing burger.

(There’s something oxymoronically fascinating about someone delicately sculpting processed cheese with a heatgun, if not overtly post-modern about an advertisement about an advertisement. ) As it so happens the alterations to the ‘real’ (emphatically store bought) burger are few, especially considering the mouth watering visuals that are crafted. Modified hamburger or not though, the resulting representations provide a vision of the product with more texture, flavor, and presence than the good itself. Equally aggressive semantics, have come to sculpt McDonald’s playspaces (fig.41,42,43) as well the playspaces of most fast-food outlets. The latter’s loud, inflated, and repetitive features, proclaim disproportionate quantities of enjoyment while responding to an ideal of play

Hyper-Reality (prelude)

4

The hyper-real is a post-modern and post-structuralist concept often equated with the simulacrum: a state in which it is impossible to define reality from the simulation of reality. (A state, in effect already broached through neo-regionalism.) A more nuanced and applicable version of the concept is utilized by Umberto Eco, whom describes the hyper-real as that arising from a “desire for the real thing”. As he explains, in Travels in Hyper-Reality, this hunger, often translates into a desire for ‘more’ in lieu of reality. That is to say, more straightforwardly iconic representation (less complex symbolism), more realism, more stuff, more quantification, more of anything in an effort to create some kind of value and give-off the impression of authenticity while glossing over its absence. The author`s targets include wax museums, Superman`s fortress of solitude, Sea-World, Disneyland, the Hurst Castle and so forth. The target of this section of course, is the playground.

ECO, UMBERTO. TRAVELS IN HYPER-REALITY. SONZAGNO: GRUPPO EDITORIALE, 1973. (8)

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41, 42, 43. MCDONDALD’S PLAYSPACE TRANSFORMS THE OLD PLAYGROUND FROM PUBLIC/PRIVATE GOOD, TO CORPORATE SIGNIFIER.

44. IMAGERY GENERATED BY MCDONALD’S OUR FOOR, YOUR QUESTIONS PROMOTIONS SHOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A STORE BOUGHT BURGER AND ITS REPRESENTATION.

BY ADMITTING AND RATIONALIZING (SOME OF) THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ACTUAL PRODUCT AND THE COMMERCIAL REPRESENTATION, THESE PROMOTIONS HAVE THE CONTRADICTORY EFFECT OF FURTHER BLURRING THE LINE BETWEEN REALITY AND FICTION.

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that has been inculcated through decades of representation.

It’s important to note that these playspaces, usually encased in glass, double as billboards and therefore hypertrophy their size, embolden their colors, and simplify their form in accordance with the speed of passing motorists. The above trends have not remained isolated to the playspace; as Susan G. Solomon explains: “these versions of playgrounds, heightened examples of equipment available in the general marketplace, have become the new standard for America... McDonald’s has caused consumers to expect similarly shrill examples in their own parks and has set a standard that most consumers accept as the only choice available.”9 Outpacing the simulations of the McDonald’s playspace, today’s playgrounds have begun to demonstrate an affinity towards hyper-realism (not to be confused with hyper-reality) and its ‘sign cousins’ iconicism, and didacticism, as a means to further aggrandize its perceived value. A look at current playstructure catalogues reveals a category of recently added products, classified under such monikers as, ‘real situations’ and ‘natural play environments’, that attempt to denote nature with as much realism as possible. Some of the more common elements in these categories include authentically molded concrete logs and stumps, rubber boulders, as well as fiberglass dinosaur-digs.(Fig45-49) These elements try very hard to be the ideal signifieds of logness and boulderness. In the end, fiberglass tree stumps hold no programmatic advantage, safety or otherwise, over actual tree stumps. Such efforts therefore seem to indicate that the simulation of nature and adventure is more respectable than its actual occurrence, and that the relationship between realism and reality is, in these play47

45, 46, 47, 48. SYNTHETIC BOULDERS, DINOSAUR BONES AND TREE TRUNKS FROM APE PLAYGROUND’S SELECTION OF REAL SITUATIONS.

49. THIS MINNESOTA PLAYGROUND

BY LANDSCAPE STRUCTURES NOT ONLY USES FAUX NATURAL ELEMENTS, BUT CONNOTES THE ADVENTURE PLAYGROUNDS OF OLD WITH FAUX-WOOD PANELS AND NAILS DESIGNED AT CROOKED ANGLES.

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grounds at least, inversely proportional. Such iconic intents extend to the playground’s flat surfaces, which currently serve as canvas for games, puzzles, and various programmatic labels such as ‘my store’ or ‘my street’. The result is that there’s absolutely nothing hidden, secret, complicated, nuanced, ambiguous, or ‘invisible’ about the playground. While some of its elements have gained a plump, plastic curvature, and others have been reduced to two dimensions, all parts aim to be have an overt purpose, reference, and hence, as straightforward and quantifiable a value (or safety feature) as possible. In other words, the current playground seems intent on branding and emphatically declaring the presence of play itself as a means of bludgeoning the customer with programmatic value5. Though no explicit branding is on display, the combination is not unlike the symbiotic partnership between fries and their logofied container, the thin facadism of today’s suburban home, or other kinds of packaging. (fig.50,51,52) (The effect is also often unconsciously pop-like in character.)

5

Programmatic Value/False Labelling

As John Brown,explains, ``false labeling is a designed-to-be-sold strategy that makes a house look better in the sales brochure than it is in reality.`` Playgrounds and playground catalogues use a similar strategy by zealously naming, and listing as many of its features as possible.

(BROWN KINDLE LOCATIONS 357-358).

The desire to provide the perception of value is also at the heart of another quintessentially American hyper-real construct shared by fast-food, fast-houses, and current playgrounds: supersizing. John Brown, author of What’s Wrong with This House describes supersizing as a means of convincing the buyer that they are getting more for less. As he goes on to explain though, its generally the case that “the functional value of these supersized elements is much less than the more reasonably scaled version.”10 To clarify, McDonald’s french-fries, McMansions, as well as today’s playgrounds can be characterized not so much by their size, as by the way in which size predicates their worth.

It is a defining characteristic of a McMansion, much as a large fry, that it be essentially the same as its smaller, normal 49

50, 51, 52. THESE LANDSCAPE PLAYGROUND STRUCTURES- THEIR FLAT CHARACTER AND THEIR SOMEWHAT NOSTALGIC ILLUSTRATION- GIVE OFF AN INADVERTENT POP-VIBE THAT ONLY ADULTS CAN FULLY APPRECIATE.

53,54. LIKE MANY CATALOGUES, THE APEPLAY SELECTION CREATES A PROGRESSION OF PLAYGROUNDS, BY MULTIPLYING KEY PROGRAMS, LIKE SLIDES, OVER AND OVER.

55 THE MULTPIPLICY OF ‘CLIMBERS’ PROVIDED BY BLUEIMPS CATALOGUE

sized counterpart in regards to everything but scale. This form of ‘inter-homogeneity’ marks the McMansion as explic itly better than its smaller peer, as it makes square footage the only differentiation, and therefore the only measure of desirability. A look at the ideals pictured in playground catalogues reveals the use of analogous strategies by playground manufacturers. When compared to past playspaces, these are not necessarily gargantuan, but inclined to repeat the same program multiple times in order to give the impression of multiplied value. Irrespective of the average size of built playspaces, the ideal nonetheless remains the impression of a massive sprawling playset, as the only difference between one model and the next ‘better’ model is an eminently quantifiable feature like the number of slides or the number of swings. (fig.53,54,55) The desire for ‘more’ also applies towards the American predisposition towards ‘more choice’. Being confronted with a countless variety of options, a threshold is crossed with52

in which it is not the possibilities offered by every discrete choice that matters, but the fact that the choices exist, and that there are more of them. As qualitative judgements pertaining to individual options are suspended, it follows that a greater quantity of choice is the good, not their potential effects. Many of today’s playground manufacturers and home developers make use of this semantic strategy. In general, ”as much as 20 percent of (a suburban home’s) construction budget goes toward the application of superficial variety - different shapes, colors, window types, different styles of tack-on ornament”11 that is expressly meant to counteract the notion of the cookie-cutter home. A brief look at playground catalogues, once again reveals similar trends. Though the Apeplay promotional pamphlet expressly notes that is not a catalogue and not full of “cookie-cutter solutions”12 its hundreds of options are, at their core, aesthetic alterations of ladders, platforms, swings, stairs and slides comparable to the relentless formulaism underlying the surface articulations of the suburban home. (Fig.56) Most of the modes of meaning so far explored- the many tenets of more - as well as the kitch contextualism of the playground, come together under a seemingly innocuous playground element: its ‘shaders’(fig.57,58). Though playground manufactures explain the latter to provide respite from the summer sun, this is improbable considering the fact that these usually top briefly-occupied transition zones adjacent to slides and climbers- not too mention the fact that they are an ineffective way to provide shade in the first place.13 What is attractive about this feature is that it makes the playground seem taller and fuller; hiding the fact that it is in reality but a few feet off the ground. Not unlike the multi-gables of the McMansion, it also makes the playground seem metastasized by providing opportunities for repetition and articulations that 53

6

Monsterpieces

The drawings found in Monsterpieces paleontologically ironize buildings like New York`s Hearst Tower, the Beijing National Stadium, and the Phaneo Science Center.

AUDE-LINE DULIERE, CLARA WONG. MONSTERPIECES. SINGAPORE: GORDON GOFF, 2010. (10)

re-”create the skyline of an entire village”.14 These mini-roofs are also a form of third order neo-regionalism: they are meant to emulate the typologies of their suburban setting, while the latter are themselves nostalgic signifiers of the rural communities they likely replaced.

Moving beyond McDonald’s and the suburbs, to address architecture as a global phenomenon, it becomes possible to propose the playground as a present-future snapshot of post-critical architecture. Though there are many insightful critiques pertaining to this mode of architecture, Monsterpieces6, by Aude Lynn Duliere and Clara Wong most inci-

56. THE SHADERS ON THIS PLAYCRAFT PLAYGROUND MAY BE THE MOST PROMINENT FEATURE OF THE CONSTRUCTION. 57. MOST PLAYGROUND CATALOGUES OFFFER A WIDE RANGE OF POSSIBLE SHADERS.

sively illustrates the absurdly simplified iconicity7 of post-critical8 architectural form15 by representing it using cartoons.

No such drawings are required for the playground. Culturally frictionless for over almost a hundred years now, the playstructure has already arrived at an infantile, if terminal denominator of simplicity. If any architectural commodity `surfs the waves of capital` as Koolhaus characterized16 post-critical architecture, while also epitomizing the projective tenets of easy and legible, it is the playground. For theses reasons does it offer a snap-shot of a post-critical flatline17, where shape is used in lieu of form, and the ambience possible thanks to new technologies and materials fully supersedes anything but the most concise, amenable, and convenient of meaning.

The conclusion of this section proposes that if fast-food restaurants make a point of following text with images, fast-houses adjust their signs to conform to a middle-class denominator, and the apogee of global architecture is a metaphorical oneliner, then perhaps the playground is as historically prescient as it has ever been. In which case, the semantic denominator of all future goods is likely to be a nostalgic five year old.

Convenience Sandwiched between semantics and utility, a final comparison linking playgrounds and their fast-food legacy, is here outlined under the thematic of convenience.

Fast-food provides consumers with an opportunity to quickly and relatively cheaply purchase a meal without even having to leave the seat of their car, while the playground, for its part, has been designed to be as expediently risk-free as possible.

These pragmatic aspects overlap. It is no coincidence that by 1996 McDonald’s owned approximately 47, 000 playgrounds “more than any other private entity in the United States”18.

7

Architectural Icons

An icon, as described by Charles Sanders Pierce, is a type of sign that refers to another object by virtue of a physical resemblance.

(As opposed to a symbol, which is a type of sign, like a letter, that has to be learned. ) Iconic architecture therefore refers to those buildings which formally resemble nests, ducks, eggs, diapers, crystals, sails, rockets, cells, or encephelopods. “Driven by social forces, the demand for instant fame and economic growth”, architectural icons play their part, not at the street level, or even at the scale of the city, but rather on a global stage. Though not the first example of renown, Frank Gerhy’s Bilbao Museum and its single handed reinvingoration of the Bilbao economy, is credited by Jencks to have kick-started the current fascination.

CHARLES JENCKS . INTRODUCTION IN ICONIC BUILDING THE POWER OF ENIGMA. LONDON FRANCES LINCOLN, 2005, (2)

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Post-Critical

Post-Critical is a term used to describe the (most recent) demise of critical theory in the humanities and social sciences. Echoed in architecture, it has pushed forward the notion that the architect should do instead of think, and enable, instead of resist cultural forces. It argues that instead of ideology, theory, or criticism, the architect can have an impact through the sheer effect of his forms. It has, for the past few decades, played a role in shaping, (or at the very least, grouped together,) a global assortment of tectonically expressive and didactically iconic architecture. Historically, this movement positions itself most clearly in reaction to the deconstructionist architecture of the 1970s and 1980s and its relatively esoteric semiotic theory.

JANE RENDELL, JONATHAN HILL, MURRAY FRASER AND MARK DORRIAN. CRITICAL ARCHITECTURE. ROUTLEGE, 2007.

(P, 51-55)

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The playspace falls in line with the company’s intent to provide “an easy way to feel like a good parent.”19 Thus, “assuming children are safe (in the playscape) adults (can) turn away and concentrate on eating their own french fries.”20 Public playgrounds operate on the same principle. Taking kids to the playstructure is designed to provide parents a respite from 24-7 parenting. As risk-taking and the possibility for injury have supposedly been engineered out of the playstructure, mothers and fathers are able to avoid the trauma of broken bones, bruises and scrapes, while the playground`s typical lack of mud, dirt, and plants, helps, them avoid the inconvenience of torn and dirty clothes. Much as fast-food’s hand-held selection of burgers and fries, children playing at the playground are unlikely to require clean-up or cleaning up after. The playground is therefore intended to be a no mess no fuss affair, that goes beyond the realm of simple convenience, to promote itself as a kind of hyper-safe utopia for children and their parents.

Expediency also extends to the playgrounds operations. In the 1980’s, McDonald’s executives got together and agreed that “zero training”20 was to be their ideal benchmark. The process of making a burger has since then been scientifically orchestrated so that it takes no more than 30 seconds to make, even for the freshest employee. The playground’s own manifestation aims to be convenient enough to allow similarly low-skilled maintenance. The accreditation process provided by the National Playground Safety Institute to become a playground inspector takes but two days to complete21- something that would be impossible if a variety of truly different playground typologies existed or if the current model had any moving parts. In then end, the desire to provide parents with a safe, consistent, durable playground has a contrary effect.

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The consequences of the playground’s semantics and convenience in regards to its ultimate function will be framed and organized in the following via the introduction of fast-goods.

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58. BLUE IMP MOST AWESOME PLAYGROUND? OR A VISION OF THE PLAYGROUND APOCALYPSE?

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PART 2

GETTING TO KNOW FAST-GOODS

I N T R ODU CI N G T HE N O TI O N O F A CONFLICTED COMMODITY A FAST-INTRODUCTION The notion of a fast-good is here defined in an explicit manner in order to structure a critique of the playground, and to propose a broader target for architects and designers. Although any definition by default includes the history and cultural baggage of the ‘fast’ prefix, the concept of a fast-good is here delimited more concisely; to only include those commodities1 that have become dysfunctional as a consequence of their desire to be sold.

1

Commodity

The standardization of food, housing, and playgrounds has allowed consumers to enjoy unparalleled convenience and more apparent bang for their buck, yet it has also often left them feeling unsatisfied, if not duped. As these products respond to the exigencies of mass production, and to the desire of being sold, it is often the case that they no longer perform as advertised, and that they prey on human nature, by sacrificing long term function for short term appeal. It is the aim of a Big Mac, much as it is the aim of a McMansion, to be sold as quickly as possible, with as much profit as possible.

Food chemists and housing developers create products that are meant to attract the attention of the consumer, arouse his desires, and emphasize value.

To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with these practices, they are, if anything, to be expected in a market con-

Though a commodity can be used as a blanket term, making reference to any marketable good, it can also be more specifically defined as a product supplied without qualitative differentiation. It is therefore possible to use the different ways in which food is produced to illustrate a gamut of commoditization. On one end of this spectrum lies local fruits and vegetables, whose taste ,and quality vary depending upon the season, the type of seed, and the grower, while on the other end lies corn or wheat, whose tast , quality, and price is generally considered universal: it matters little who produced the corn, or where the wheat comes from, allowing the price of either to be determined by the function of the market as a whole. As has been shown, the playground`s double code, tends to force it at either end of the spectrum.

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dition. Such alterations only result in what is here coined as a ‘fast-good’ when they go beyond mere spectacle, and sacrifice the fundamental promises and functions of a product. This occurs when the Big Mac’s lab concocted blend of physiologically irresistible components digest into little nutritional value, when the bold colliding geometries within a residential home, initially so attractive, prove dysfunctional and unlivable, or when the gregariously-colored topographies of the playstructure hamper play and actively disengages the community within which it finds itself. In an effort to demonstrate the programmatic miscarriages of the playground, the following critique will be organized in relation to the themes of ‘play’ and ‘community’.

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We need to improve the dynamic mechanism of people’s self-governance at the primary level... turning urban and rural neighborhoods into communities of social life.

Hu Jinto 17th Party Congress, 2011

We will devolve power to the lowest level so neighborhoods take control of their destiny.

David Cameron, Building the Big Society, 2011

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COMMUNITY AS C O M P R I S E D O F B O T H I N PU T AN D OU T PU T A FAST-INTRODUCTION Before moving on to the fast-playground’s first failing - its inability to foster a sense of community- it is required to first explain what exactly is expected of it in the first place - that is to say, what exactly is meant by community?

The answer to this question is varied as it might stem from a number of different lines of inquiry such as: how large can a community be? Are communities private or public? Does a community require face to face engagement or can it be online? Can any group of people, living in close proximity be called a community? To simplify things, this section posits that a community is comprised of two elements: interactions between people (input), and agency (output.)

Of the two items just mentioned, the first is straightforward, while the second demands clarification. Agency is a term that has only relatively recently been introduced within the architectural lexicon, though it has a long history within political and sociological discourse. It “is traditionally held in a dialectic paring with structure”1 and though the ability of the agent to affect change varies from theory to theory, in architecture at least, it/he/she is usually considered to be an entity that acts with a certain degree of autonomy from the structure it inhabits. As such, it is often subversive, and indeed, most of the architectural projects linked to agency 67

in recent years have been particularly grassroots and hackerlike in character - more about re-evaluating the structure of a system and emancipating itself from the locust of power than enforcing it.

By including agency into the definition of community, the latter is pressed to develop an intrinsic identity that goes beyond the global, or the neo-regional. Thus, identical settlements or any group that does not produce some kind of difference, though it may be ‘communal’ and function thanks to a complex system of interactions, is not a community, as its homogeneity makes it a subset of a larger whole - a larger community. Of course, no group of people is perfectly identical, nonetheless, there is a turning point where the unique character of a place, layered by memory, history, and the people that presently inhabit it, gestalts into a sub-culture. For these reasons, this section maintains that a community is by default idiosyncratic, an emergent property arising from the coalescence of individuals which presents itself as artifact, not a cog, within a larger structure. Thus, for the playground to enrich the community in which it finds itself, it must by default, not only signify the setting, or provide a space for people to interact, but also take part in the construction and creation of a new place.

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“Playgrounds have a specific strength in connecting people to places. This social connection gives identity to public space.�

Liane Lefaivre, in conversation with Droll, 2007

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HOW T ODA Y ’ S PL A Y G R OU N D S HAM PE R PLACE-MAKING PLACELESS PLAYGROUNDS As can be extrapolated from the given definition of community, unless the playground somehow engenders interaction and amplifies the idiosyncrasies of the place within which it finds itself, it is bound to remain a peon of a larger structure. In keeping with previous sections of this thesis, the following posits that, far from promoting contextual differences, the playground goes out of its way to negate community agency. The following is divided into two parts: the first goes over theories and playgrounds of concern to the understanding of the impact of labor, making, and construction upon a community, while the second uses these examples, and others provided earlier on in this thesis, to inform a critical comparison with the impact of today’s commercial playgrounds on their setting.

From Aldo Van-Eyck’s Amsterdam playgrounds to Dattner’s New York playstructures, there is extensive precedent showing architects, landscape architects, and designers creating contextually informed playgrounds that engage and foster community interaction and agency both in an urban and suburban context. Today’s commercial playgrounds have an opposite effect on their setting. The current playstructure, is 71

maintained through a top-down form of governance, while its materials as well as its physical and bureaucratic methods of construction, themselves symbiotic, declare the impossibility of agency through any form of indexical or political modification. Moreover, its inevitable and total replacement, in accordance with an unalterable, pre-defined life-cycle model, erases the potential of spatial memory and place-making. Finally, the fact that it is everywhere the same, or worst, reductive in regards to local context, would seem to ignore the scale to which it is intended to cater, rendering it a (not so) playful doppelganger of the suburban context which it currently favors.

The commercial playground’s most straightforward barrier to local agency results from the fact that it disallows the community to have a hand in modifying, maintaining, repairing, designing or controlling it in any way. In order to prove this to have a negative impact though, it’s necessary to briefly touch upon how building and design, on the part of local residents, can pay dividends not only in regards to the playground itself, but on a community level as well.

Theoretically, this kind of argument finds roots in the first volume Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. The latter puts forward the idea that the worth of a product in a primarily capitalist society is relegated to its exchange value and therefore objectified in such a way that its true labor cost is ignored- an effect compounded by the fact that primary producers are generally hidden through layers of trade and ownership. In Marx’s own (translated) words, the moneyed form of the world revealed by commodities “conceals the social character of private labour and the social relations between the individual workers”1- implying in part, that a bought playground will never achieve the same value, or the same bonds, 72

as a community built or designed alternative.

More recent studies by behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of The Upside of Irrationality empirically support a parallel notion : the idea that people greatly overvalue what they make. Experiments comparing the price that a ‘maker’ would pay for his own creation, versus the price a non-maker would pay for that same object, show that the maker would be willing to spend an average of four times the money that the nonmaker would. Though it must be noted that the test objects in question could be bought for a very small percentage of income, these kinds of results argue that, on some level, people hold an irrational attachment to the objects they craft. The most persuasive proof for this attraction, which Dan Ariely, perhaps maladroitly dubs the “Ikea Effect”2, is the fact that most companies have sought to monetize it, either by providing means of customization or by requiring user assembly.

The best arguments for expanded playground agency through hands-on, as well as policy modification though, are not theoretical but reflective; to be discerned through the recorded effects of past playgrounds. As previously demonstrated, the Amsterdam Playgrounds are an impressive example of bottom-up agency which consequently empowered both children and the community. As Liane Lefaivre expounds: “The Amsterdam archives contain over 190 letters from the citizens of Amsterdam requesting a playground (and)...testify to a support that was nothing short of phenomenal both on behalf of the municipal government and on behalf of the people of Amsterdam.“3

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60. AMSTERDAM’S GUENZEVELD PLAYGROUND BY DATTNER.

1966

1957

59. THE LENOX CAMDEN PLAYGROUND BEFORE AND AFTER ITS D.Y.I. RENOVATION.

Notable forms of bottom-up playgrounds need also include, the hundreds of english Adventure Playgrounds, as well as the American D.Y.I. Vest Pocket Parks of the 1970`s. While observing Boston’s local built Lenox-Camden Playground (fig.59), ethnologist and playground advocate Robin C. Moore observed that though play activities were the initial reason for visiting the playground, these were in effect catalysts for the much more important and widespread comingling of all members of the neighborhood. It was also his conjecture that the success of vest pocket park playgrounds in engaging their neighborhood was in large part due to the fact that adults had a role to play in initially building and continually re-arranging the space.4 Considering the nature of today’s communities, comparisons with D.Y.I. or even slightly self-modified playspaces might come off as a little optimistic, if not in some ways Ruskinesque or romantic. A brief case history of Dattner’s New York Adventure Playground (not be confused with Adventure Playgrounds as a typology) is therefore offered as an example of a playspace built entirely by third parties -architects, contractors, craftsmen- that had no initial ties the community. In other words, the process and impact of this playground is here given primacy as it is eminently contextual, by most measures successful, and most importantly, realistic in terms of cost, participation, and final effect in light of the state of today’s urban and suburban communities.

As Dattner’s narrative in Design for Play elucidates, the design process undertaken for this playground resembled the more involved consultation between many architects and their client. In order to engage the community Dattner set up a series of both formal and informal meetings with different segments of the population; going as far as to include 75

61,62. A PRELIMENARY AND FINAL MODEL FOR THE ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND.

1966

stops at local public schools. As Dattner recounts, the first such gathering comprised of verbal presentations explaining general concepts and their application to specific site conditions, as well as an unveiling of initial drawings/sketches, which, as he notes, “gave a good idea of what the new facility might look like, without being too detailed or definite about any aspect of the design.”5. In this landscape architect’s opinion, clear, yet unpolished sketches allowed participants, to feel comfortable contributing their own opinions.(Fig.63) In fact, many such meetings were purposely casual - taking place within the homes of the mothers that had initiated the playground project.

While the playground was being designed, the same group of active community members that had begun the playground process by lobbying New York Parks and Recreation, set up their own non-profit organization in order to initiate and sustain large amounts of fundraising. Though New York Parks and Recreations would provide maintenance, due to the loose part component of the playground, an annual sum was required to replenish play construction materials. A critical part of the Adventure Playground’s creation process therefore comprised of obtaining the long term support of sponsoring organizations, as well as pledges from local community organizations to continue to raise funds for supervision, paints, pots, and varied art supplies. As Dattner recalls, “many and diverse persons felt personally responsible for the upkeep of the facility and felt justified in expecting an equal commitment form the other interested parties.”6 In other words, the playground had gained enough supporters, momentum, and community involvement that people felt it had earned a sustained commitment on everyone’s part.

Also inclusive was the actual building of the Adventure Play77

1966 64. CHILDREN PLAYING WITH THE ADVENTURE PLAGYROUND’S CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS.

ground. Believing that the “construction process is one of the most fascinating things that a child or an adult can see”,7 Dattner organized impromptu tours of the site with both parents and children, which invariably led to the testing of various half-built features, which in turn led to constant tweaking and modification. Organic, on-site design was also the province of the workmen, whom, building unusual objects with familiar materials like concrete, brick, and wood, often came to unexpected and fruitful results. As Dattner recounts8 :

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The workmen’s innate sense of order would not let them arrange the boards [of a curved wall] at random, so they developed an elaborate system for placing the boards to make a symmetrical pattern...They ...were extremely helpful in divising solutions to other, more difficult problems.

These kinds of alterations continued long past initial construction - only the seasoned use of play apparatus would define final position and morphology.

Also of note regarding the construction process was the adhoc incorporation of the previous playground. The Adventure Playground was initiated as the renovation of an existing playstructure, and in order to keep within its $85,000 budget, it made sure to utilize as much of this initial structure as possible. To this aim, Dattner made sure to recycle fencing, benches, plumbing, existing entrances, trees, even the cobblestones of the previous pavement.9 At the end of the project, a flagpole was added to hoist the flag that one of the mothers involved had designed. This was not an empty gesture. The playground had “brought the community together in a common task that was to take months of work and involve literally thousands of people” while the community organizations that had come into existence in order to support it, along with the modest tithe that they required “continually reminded the community that their efforts had secured the project in the first place and were needed to ensure its success.“10 The adventure playground is still around today, and has recently been refurbished.

The examples just outlined - Marx`s and Dan Ariely`s theoreis, as well as Van Eyck`s and Dattner`s playgrounds - make the argument that the provocation of community interaction and community design, both through their construction and their use, are fundamental theoretical and historical functions of the playground. It follows that a playground typology which would disallow any kind of built or political agency is acting to counter-purposes.

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Placeless Playgrounds Unfortunately, bottom-up agency and community involvement is exactly what the current playground typology hinders. The typical neighborhood playground is essentially owned, not by the neighborhood, but by a larger government entity. As it stands, alterations to an already built playground by a member of the community cannot but be perceived as graffiti. It is against the law and in bad taste to modify the playground, even with good intentions in mind. More to the point, as José Ellie, director of Parks and Recreation for the Ottawa region explains, every playground has an expiry date, a set of parameters - “a model”11 - that governs its existence and supersedes community decisions. Safety inspectors (certified in no less than two whole days) have the authorization to close a playground if they deem it hazardous, while parks officers have the authorization to kick people out of the playground after hours. To summarize, though the neighborhood playground is, in the end, still a public good in an economic sense of the word, its non-excludability comes with a few caveats, namely the inability of the community to modify, repair or control the playstructure without it being in any way illegal.

It might seem beside the point to talk of the playground from a policy perspective, but the fact is that the playground’s physical and political manifestation go hand in hand: the playground’s hidden methods of production prerequisite an obscure decision making process. Thus, even if this top-down control did not define the playground, the sleek metal and plastic materials of the typical playstructure would nonetheless pose enough of a physical and semantic barrier to disengage most communities from utilizing it as a means of expression and identification. Moreover, the methods of construction required for its process assemblies make it impos80

sible for peculiarities, hand crafted touches, or local materials to be present within or upon its components. These material choices, as well as the playground’s burdensome safety standards; not too mention its hefty price tag, make it seem ‘unbuildable’ by the average suburbanite or even local businesses.

The interactions between the community and the craftsmen, of the kind Dattner facilitated to design the Adventure Playground are also lacking. The commercial playground is premade in factory, making its erection more of an assembly with bolts and screws than an actual construction. A small playground (minus surfacing) can be installed almost overnight.

In consequence, there’s no longer an opportunity to think about the playground on site, or adjust the playground to the response of the community as it is being built. Expediency has the contrary effect of making the playground’s construction more of an inconvenience than an event. Thus does the current model replace opportunities for ‘place-making’ and the expression of a neighborhood’s agency, with standardized parts that are, at worst, imported from overseas, and, at best, made ‘somewhere’ in the country.

There’s also a dearth of community agency in regards to the initial design phase of today’s typical suburban playground.

In fact, most suburban residents have absolutely no say in defining what type of playground gets built in their neighborhood as its construction tends to happen even before the neighborhood itself is in place. Developers must leave a percentage of their land available as well as pay development charges as a percentage of their total investment to be spent on a playground. (This is applicable to Ontario, though similar models exist across North America) Unfortunately, ‘front end agreements’ between the city and the developer have 81

given the latter the option to build the playground thanks to injections of city capital, (to be paid back at a later date,12) before the suburb itself is built. The decision as to where the playground will reside becomes the province of city urbanists, while the decision as to what gets built is left up to a conversation between the developer and the residents of liminal suburbs that only have an indirect stake in the decision. This agreement benefits the city in that it receives a new playground years earlier than it would have otherwise, while giving the developer a selling feature. It also means that future residents have no say in what kind of playground they would want, or what kind of playground they inherit. It also perpetuates the homogeneity of the playstructure as the developer has relatively little stake in the project - the construction of said playground has, after all, been thrust upon him by the city. Not suprisingly, the developer is therefore likely to settle for what has worked in the past.

More harmful to community agency though, are the means by which people do get involved vis-a-vis their local playground.

As JosÊ Ellie notes, people tend to be very active when it comes to upgrading or replacing their playstructure. They will generally lobby and fundraise extensively, and aren’t shy of voicing their opinions at public meetings during which they are usually shown hyper-real playground renderings by the project manager. Unfortunately, not only is this type of involvement short lived - leaving no avenues to stave off general disengagement once the design is done - it also satisfies the public`s need for involvement. That is to say, fundraising in order to meet the monetary prerequisite of a matching government grant, or picking between a splash pad and two slides, or two slides and a swing-set, is the new normal - the acceptable and satisfactory means of public agency. When all is said and done, the only standard of agency available is 82

through the top-down lens of contractors, project managers, and the city. Compared to processes undertaken during the construction of the Adventure Playground or the Amsterdam Playgrounds, this leaves little room for consultation, discussion, or the organization of longer commitments.

Especially counterproductive in terms of fostering a unique sense of place over the long term, is the way elevating safety standards, plastic designs, if not expediency and habit, tend to preclude the government from renovating, fixing, or building upon an already existing playground. In consequence, when the playground is expired (usually after 20 years or so), or significantly damaged, it is simply replaced - taking with it memories, childhoods, and whatever physical trace of neighborhood history that had been able to etch itself upon its plastic and metal surface. People have come to not only expect the total replacement of a playground, they also view old playgrounds as unsafe, broken, and outdated and are eager to replace them entirely, as quickly as possible. Like the suburb within which it is often built, the playground is a kind of anti-palimpsest, constantly erasing itself with every new iteration. As the new playground is, for all intents and purposes, a programmatic doppelganger of the structure it is replacing, it becomes impossible to use it as a temporal marker in even the most general sense.

The typical neighborhood playground doesn’t only exist out of time, it is also spatially a-contextual. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the playstructure’s construction is that it generally inhabits a section of flat graded land. Though a flat piece of public property seems like the simplest place to build a playground, landscaping is by far the largest expense of installation: a small-ish playstructure can cost around $40,000, yet landscaping easily brings the price tag to the quarter mil83

lion mark.13 In refusing to work around, or with pre-existing features, either because of safety standards, design dogma, or expediency, the playground foregoes its most likely opportunity to create an initial sense of context, and it most likley opportunity to remain affordable. Its tabula rasa insertion once again sets the precedent for future non-agency.

That the playground is formed and applied in a fairly universal way poses an initial challenge in regards to contextualization. Perhaps more harmful to the given context though, is when the neo-regionalism meant to gloss over this fact succeeds in being interpreted as culturally relevant. In contrast with the naturally occurring differentiation of certain pastplaygrounds, the emphatic attempts of current playstructures to become the signifiers of their context, end up being reductive. In most cases the commercial playground provides a standard for contextualism that is itself a barrier to critical, or ‘natural’ regionalism by localizing itself through labels.

To conclude, though playgrounds are supposedly playful public goods, the typical neighborhood playstructure should, for all intents and purposes, be considered to extend the privatization and homogenization of the public realm, especially in the suburbs. Massive cars, overbearing garages, and even larger houses highlight the importance of private ownership within suburbia, while thin sidewalks and the overall lack of public spaces highlights just how little commitment is directed towards the greater community14. The current playstructure completes this picture. Its top-down maintenance, material composition and disregard for context, past, present, and future, provides a commercially conservative standard exactly where it can do the most harm. At the end of the day, it seems somewhat ironic, that, as Dan Ariely explains, the instant nature of instant cake mix has been purposely scaled 84

back to allow the user input of eggs15, while the playground, a good meant to involve the entire community through the social dynamics of play, offers even less opportunities for involvement. What should have been an opportunity to add life, originality, and identity to the neighborhood has been substituted by a programmatic husk dressed up as an anthropomorphic rainbow.

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WHY TODAY’S PL A Y G R OU N D S A R E JUST NO FUN PLAYLESS PLAYGROUNDS Most of the commercial playground’s features run counter to play as a creative, imaginative, and intrinsically motivated activity. Unlike the previous section, the following does not set up a few playgrounds as the nodal points of comparison: play is simply too varied an activity. Though this section does go over successful alternative strategies in order to, by means of contrast, highlight the current playgrounds failures, none of these strategies, or their combination, is necessarily being pushed forward as THE ideal playground.

Susan G. Solomon labels the existing post and beam playground a “disaster”1, M.J. Ellis, author of Why People Play, describes it as a “travesty”2, and lady Allen of Hurtwood dubs it “a child’s hell”3. It so happens most children agree.

“Playgrounds are often deserted”4. Though digital persuasions and other competing leisures make convenient scapegoats for today’s poor playground attendance, studies as far back as the 1960’s; before videogames, facebook, and the internet, calculate the average time spent on a traditional playground by a child to be approximately 15 minutes a visit5. Statistical research conducted in 1970 by Dee and Liebman, for its part “showed that attendance at a playground was inversely related to the existence of other activities provided by the neigh87

65,66,67. CHILDREN PLAYING AND INVENTING ON A LOOSE PARTS PLAYGROUND

borhood”6 - hinting that the traditional playground has been, for quite some time now, fundamentally flawed. The reason for this is fairly straightforward - the playstructure doesn’t deliver on its most important promise: it is simply no fun. Instead of being mysterious, complex, and contextually unique, it is obsessively consistent, repetitive, and explicit; instead of being adventurous and challenging, it emphasizes zerotolerance, and avoids the potential for risk at all cost; instead of being an opportunity for different community members of all ages to socialize through play, it panders to children and subdivides them into bracketed age groups; and finally, instead of promoting play in all its multiple guises it eschews originality by substituting a narrow focus on kinaesthetic. In truth, the playground vanquishes freedom and play at the one place it should be assured. It is the ultimate programmatic irony, the ultimate fast-good.

The fact that it is immediately evident to anyone stepping onto the playground, that slides are meant for sliding, stairs for climbing, swings for swinging (and that ambiguous structures are helpfully labeled) can be argued to hamper children’s improvisational potential and lessen their ability to engage in imaginative play by locking-in programs before they can be tampered and re-appropriated. In Understanding Young Children’s Learning Through Play, Pat Broadhead and Andy Burt show how easily and extensively children will engage in imaginary play in non-traditional loose-parts settings.

Their observations, taking place over several months, provide examples as to how children transform empty milkcrates into walls, pine cones into chandeliers, and all manner of discarded objects into capricious fictional worlds that have as much to do with the shape and iconic allusions of the objects on hand, as the personal history of the child7. More than anything, their incisive vignettes demonstrate the complexity 89

and fragility of these imaginary constructs, hinting that the weak symbolism1 of found objects and their junk label, is in large part what allows children to overlay their own fantasies in a way that is likely more profound and engaging than would ever be possible in a traditional playground composed of overly familiar apparatus like slides or stairs. This isn’t to say that the traditional playground cannot take part in fictional play, but that considering the delicate nature of these subjunctive realities, it is not a catalyst, but instead poses a very real deterrent.

The realism that has come too mediate the interactions within the commercial playground creates a similar obstacle. Studies by Scrapstore Playpods, a non-profit loose-parts2 (fig 6567) playground organization founded in the UK, illustrated that while children often played dress-up, creating a large demand for adult apparel, clothing which assigned singular roles, such as skeleton costumes or other explicit Halloween ensembles, were unpopular.8 In light of this observation, an argument can be made that iconic play elements often become a hindrance, as their thematic specificity is something that children have to contend with to engage in imaginative play and its plastic, fluid, scenarios. The skeleton costume, just as a dinosaur slide, is only relevant if the scenario at hand is similarly themed. Hence, though interchangeable objects like phones or keyboards may serve a playful purpose, an unalterable wild west theme can be considered to do more harm than good. The current playground’s often hyper-realistic signs are not a childish, but rather an adult vocabulary.

The playstructures overblown simulation - the fact that it is meant to be recognized as a simulation of a certain type - is often lost on children, and can only be explained as a means to help adults understand that they are in the presence of a play area.

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Also a barrier to play is the commercial playground’s desire to remain static so that it be cheap, easily maintainable, and impressively building-esque. In accordance with the dogma of perceived value, everything in the playground is bulky and bolted in place. The resulting lack of object play is inefficient.

Studies by Dan Liebman have shown that, in the presence of manipulable items, non-manipulable items tend to be idle for 89-98% of the time.9 A non-modifiable playground makes it difficult to customize personal or group scenarios. It also forgoes the opportunity for tactile play-of-the-hand which, as neurologist Stuart Brown argues, creates “a brain that is better suited for understanding and solving problems of all sorts.”10 Moreover, as Pat Broadhead and Andy Burt illustrate through their ethnological vignettes, scale is tackled incrementally through the development of play scenarios. It took two of their four year old players, Archie and Luke, a year of playing to grow their enclosure from a three milkcrate setting, to a fifteen feet corridor.11 The current playground is therefore not only static, but concordantly overscaled - to the detriment, particularly, of sociodrammatic play.

1

Weak Symbolism

Symbolism, as defined by Charles Sanders Pierce(1839-1914), is a type of sign which has to be learned. Examples, of symbols, include flags and letters. It’s worth noting that any object is likely to refer in more that one way. Weak symbolism refers to the object’s primary referents having not yet been learned by the child or the child being given permission to disregard previous symbolism thanks to the object’s junk status.

SEMIOTICS WIKI 2011,2012.

2

Loose-Parts Playgrounds

Simply put, a playground composed of playsafe objects. Unlike, an adventure playground, the loose parts playground has no bolted pieces and is `put-away` once recess is over. The Theory of Loose Parts states that “in any environment both the degree of inventiveness and creativity and the possibility of discovery are directly proportional to the number and kinds of variables in it.”

(BURT, BROADHEAD 32)

The physical manifestation of the playground is inseparable from the nature of its prescribed usage and supervision. It’s not only the signs of the playstructure that tells children what to do, and where to do it, but also teachers and parents - even safety standards now come with a set of play instructions.

The Public Playground Safety Handbook, published by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for instance, explains in detail the proper use of most playground features; warning supervisors that “Children can be expected to descend slide chutes in many different positions, rather than always sitting and facing forward as they slide”, and that “These other positions should be discouraged at all times to minimize injuries”12. In other words, the dictatorial attitude 91

that might at one point have been a relatively benign power trip on the lunch lady’s part, is now a mandated approach to recess supervision. This counter-productive approach can once again be observed in contrast with a loose-parts model.

As Rachel, a participating teacher and playground supervisor in Pat Broadhead and Andy Burt`s study concerning looseparts playgrounds narrates13 : In this way of working the adult isn`t in control and that does make for some uncertainty. It can feel risky. As a teacher, you are normally there to teach the child, that`s your role, you`re in control. But in this way of working, the children have a lot of control.

The impulse to control that the typical playground encourages in adults, adds yet another barrier to play by creating disincentives for those children wishing to re-invent the playground’s programs and express themselves. What is in the traditional playground`s case most detrimental though, is that the constant reprimands it requires give children the impression that adults stand in the way of their own agency, which in turn discourages playful behavior not only throughout the playground, but everywhere else adults are enforcing unconditional safety.

It is the yearning for absolute safety, which is, in the traditional playground at least, the greatest impediment to play. As Cecilia Perez and Roger A. Hart put forward in their article, Beyond Playgrounds : Planning for Children`s Access to the Environment, children need to be consistently challenged, so that they press on with their accomplishments until they achieve something they had not been able to achieve before14.

Concordantly, as M. J. Ellis posits, the “most critical drag on 92

the evolution of the playgrounds has been the assumption that it is possible to sustain play in the early life of a child without there being any alteration in the play environment.”15 As Arlene Brett, Robin C.Moore and Eugene F. Provenzo, co-authors of The Complete Playground argue, today`s totally safe playground environment ”lacks most of the important elements necessary for meaningful play... complexity, challenge, risk, flexibility and adaptability”16. In contrast, many successful older playgrounds, notably Freidberg`s and Dattner`s, show diverse usage of purposely gradated challenges.

According to Wilkinson a “good playground should provide some calculated risk taking that meets the needs of the adventurous.”17 Norwegian evolutionary psychologists, Leif Kennair and Ellen Sandester take this thesis farther, by expressly linking risk to play and its benefits. Their article in the journal of evolutionary psychology, titled Children`s Risky Play From an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences, defines risky play as “a set of motivated behaviors that both provide the child with an exhilarating positive emotion and expose the child to stimuli they previously have feared.”18 By making the case that risky play helps children move beyond initial fears triggered by ‘age appropriate’ inhibitions, their article argues that, in the long run, minor scrapes and bruises, even broken arms, are beneficial. In fact, it warns that “an increased neuroticism or psychopathology in society (may result) if children are hindered from partaking in age adequate risky play.”19 Whereas the playground has the potential to provide the ideal setting for children to delimit and build upon their personal limits through challenging play, the current commercial typology explicitly opposes what Ellen Sandester and Leif Kennair categorize as the six expressions of risky play: unsuper93

68, 69. W BOAT STATION BY ARCHITECT MITSURU MAN SENDA AND LOGIT DE CLAPET. BOTH PLAYGROUNDS OFFER SPACES TO RUN AND HIDE.

1970 70, 71. A JAPANESE SLIDE AND A JAPANES CAROUSEL, OFFERING THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPERIENCE HIGH SPEEDS.

1980

72,73. CLIMBING POLES, BY NIDO, ENCOURAGE CHILDREN TO EXPERIENCE HEIGHTS.

vised exploration, great heights, high-speed, dangerous tools, dangerous elements, and rough and tumble play.20 Far from adventurous, the playground is the ultimate symbol of childproof America. It is a good that finds it more valuable to sell a reductive, quantifiable version of safety than actual play.

The tendency to wander off alone in new environments without supervision is a children`s way of becoming at ease in their new environment as well as an important and natural part of children`s play, that serves to inoculate the child from anxiety separation.21 Concurrently, though past playspaces, often made sure that the park elements from which parents observed, allowed them a privileged view of the activities taking place, many designers, including Dattner and Friedberg instinctively thought it important to allow children some features by which to hide.

Unfortunately, the visibility afforded to lunch ladies and parents by the typical playground, is not unlike that of prison wardens in its consistency, intent, and effect on play. The Public Playground Safety Handbook notes that “Supervisors should be aware of children using tube slides since the children are not always visible”22, thereby stressing the dangers that even a few seconds of non supervision could entail. It also suggests that “visual barriers should be minimized as much as possible.”23 Reports concerning playground safety also site the primacy of visibility. In an article entitled, How Safe Are Child Care Playgrounds?: A Progress Report, Donna Thompson, Susan D. Hudson and Heather M. Olsen, make explicit that “the playground must be designed so that a supervisor can observe children on the equipment”24. According to their safety rubric, the more visibility, the better the playground will be graded. Though the playground’s transparency might be convenient for adults, it means children 95

can no longer amuse themselves in secret or retreat from the world and its constant oversight to develop and exert their own playful agency unhindered.

The observations that discern rough-and-tumble play to be common across cultures and species, also support the suggestion that this kind of play is prerequisite to an evolutionary adaptive process.25 Stuart Brown, for his part, argues that this kind of play is “necessary for the development and maintenance of social awareness, cooperation, fairness and altruism”. Considering the amount of control that parents, and educators exert upon playstructure conduct though, it comes as little surprise that rough-and-tumble play, is generally viewed as a “state of anarchy that much be controlled”26.

Instead of bracketing this important and universal activity, the typical commercial playground ignores it, and facilitates the application of a zero tolerance policy that aims to avoid any potential for injury.

High-speeds, and great-heights are not only inherently frightening and playful, they also develop the perception of depth, size, shape, and other spatial-orientation abilities.27 Of course, both these features are explicitly constrained by almost all playground standards. As indicated by U.S. Consumer Prorduct Safety Commision’s Public Playground Safety Handbook, the average incline of a slide should be no more than 30 degrees for preschool and school age children29 and the maximum fall height on sand is indicated to be 4 feet, while guardrails come recommended as soon as a platform is more than 30 inches above the ground. Where heights and speed are constrained, dangerous tools such as knives, saws, or hammers, the usage of which was considered typical among children only a generation or two ago, are entirely prohibited within the current playground model, thereby robbing chil96

dren of the opportunity to take part in the kind of object play they are most keen upon.

The hyper-safety of the playground goes beyond an aversion to risk, to negatively affect the its most precious and versatile element: sand. “The ratio of pleasure to cost is extremely high for any sand area.”30 It comes as little surprise that so many designers have used sandboxes as the centerpieces of their play strategy - that is, until recently. Today’s playgrounds often have more sand then ever, yet its true purpose is not for play, but to help dampen falls. Playground designers see sand as an opportunity to comply with surfacing requirements while also providing a play feature. Yet the best sand from a surfacing perspective, is the worst sand from a play perspective. ‘Fall safe’ sand is composed of perfectly spherical, common size granules, and conforms to a host of other parameters, to the aim of endowing it with a free flowing character that accrues high compression rate. The granules that comprise the sand which carpets the typical playground are meant to slip beside each other; they do not compact and simply pour out of upturned pails. The consequence of this alteration upon playground play should not be taken lightly; Dattner for instance, took particular care to divide his playgrounds into a “physical area (with) a soft cushion (of sand) to fall and jump on and a “construction area (comprised of) stabilized gravel, an ideal building material and a base firm enough to build on.”31 By providing dry, useless sand, to satisfy the current playground’s need for a ‘safe’ surfacing material, current designs not only forgo one of the playstructure’s historically most successful play feature, they also ruin the appeal of sand for a whole generation of children with no alternative experience. Ostensibly benign and unseen, altered sand highlights the often invisible trade-off between safety and play. This relationship also summarizes the skewed valua97

tion of safety measures. The benefits of playground safety precautions are often emmediate and physically tactile - anouncing their presence and purpose in the form of padding and bulky safety railings, while the consequences of such actions are generally invisble and take time to manifest.

As Stuart Brown describes it, “play is a way to put us in sync with those around us...to tap into common emotions and thoughts and share them with others.”32 It is generally agreed upon, by most evolutionary psychologists, that one of the main functions of play is to form social competence and inform social hierarchy ,and yet, little about the current playground aims to engender gathering, leadership, or cooperation of any sort. If anything, the typical playstructure discourages interaction amongst children by providing a set of paths and devices, such as slides, swings, and polls, that may generally only be used one at a time. Except for a few choice concessions, most objects within the playground are organized in such a way that children need not come into contact with each other. As extroverted as it might seem, the irony is that the playground provides little opportunity for extroverted play. In fact, it hampers the socialization of children by dividing them into age groups, which, considering the different rates at which children develop, cannot but be considered arbitrary. ( If playgrounds were truly divided on the premise of developmental abilities, they should also separate boys and girls. After all, young children of different genders develop at different rates.)

In their progress report, Donna Thompson, Suzanne D. Hudson and Heather M. Olsen, outline the second parameter of their safe model to be “age appropriateness”33. According to this document, a playground that mixes play equipment aimed for toddlers, with equipment aimed for school age 98

children for instance, doesn’t receive a passing grade. C.S.A. playground standards, and the Public Playground Safety Handbook, also define their own parameters in accordance with different age groups, while the Ontario Day Nurseries Act, much as similar guidelines across North America, considers it illegal for two year olds and three year olds to play in the same space at the same time34. Of course, the biggest divide the playground engenders is between adults and children. The signs and programs of the playground clearly outline its intended age group. The playground therefore relegates adults to the role of spectator/supervisor instead of active leader or fellow player. In other words it ostracizes half of its potential players.

The negative impact the commercial playground has on social play can once again be elucidated in contrast with the success of a loose-parts model. The latter demonstrates not only the possibility, but also the benefits of inter and intra age group interaction. Its inclusive play has been observed to benefit younger children, by giving them the opportunity to learn from their elder peers, while at the same time giving these older players a chance to take on leadership roles. It has also been noted that a wide range of age groups and abilities dissolves the competitive atmosphere and bullying that results from homogeneous age groups and exclusive play elements.35 In the end, the type of play that is encouraged by the current playstructure is an extremely narrow kind of physicalism, easily summarized by the enumeration of half-a dozen actions: swinging, jumping, hanging, sliding, rolling and climbing.

As M.J. Ellis describes it, the playground “provides opportunity for gross motor activity by simulating in galvanized steel, some primative jungle setting.�36 In contrast to the breadth of 99

the options displayed through past-playgrounds, the current model’s methods and ambitions reveals a dearth of inspiration. The playstructure is no place for the more textured and realisitc play personalities that Stuart Brown describes: it makes no space for creators, directors, storytellers, collectors, explorers, or risky players of any sort.37 By expressing such a narrow vision of play, not too mention such a narrow phenomenological spectrum, the playground tends to make most types of play seem taboo. Worst, being a competitive good in a market place, the playstructure must make it seem like it is the only tenable option available. Thus, children grow up believing that playful-ish behavior can only be exhibited if amongst the colorful setting provided by this expensive apparatus. In failing to live up to its own hype, the playground is likely to leave people dissatisfied, duped, and less playful than when they entered.

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WHY TAKE A C R I TI C A L P O S I TI O N VI S - A - VI S T H E P L A Y G R O U N D ?

A FAST- CONCLUSION As a critique, it is the intent of this book to take a position vis-a-vis not only the playground, but also broader themes. Spilling over into architecture, this investigation takes a position in regards to its post-critical project, while at the same time, setting the course for future architectural agency.

The typical playground is a commodity that does not suffer in comparison to the suburbs or fast-food. It is standardized, quantified, globalized, neo-regional, hyper-real, eminently convenient, and boasts a semantic lineage that can be traced all the way back to Disneyland. Like many products that compete for attention within a market, the playground has gone out of its way to appeal to the consumer. In doing so though, it has sacrificed both its function as a community focal point, as well as its ability to engender play. Few goods promise so much, and yet deliver so little. The playstructure is a treasure trove of small failures and overlooked ironies that combine into colorful dysfunction. It has been the pleasure of this book to expose its falsehoods, bit by bit, in order to reveal the fast-playground; the conflicted commodity underneath it all.

All of which begs the question: why structure this book around a critique? Why not, for instance, simply move forward by proposing alternative playgrounds? Though some might argue that an understanding of the current playstructure`s faults is a requirement for intelligent action, it’s nonetheless possible 103

that an alternative, forward looking playground would have done away with most of the current playgrounds faults in any case. And though it could also be argued that, in enumerating the current playground`s failures, this book has indirectly delimited the boundaries of an ideal playground, such reasoning can be partly discarded on the basis that it presumes that any problem has only a single solution. In fact, it is this very assumption, the supposition of an ideal; a perfect and quantifiable playground, that a critique, by remaining a critique, can avoid. That being said, it was not the intention of this book to dissect the playground at such length in order to bask in the unmarred potential of unexplored playstructures.

If anything, then, this investigation aims, not to facilitate, but too avoid proposing an answer to the current playground. The fact is that a ‘playground solution’ was a long ways down the list of commitments this document sought to fulfill. More important is its ability to position itself relative to other goods, and architecture in general, just as it is also more important for future playgrounds to position themselves relative to the current playground as opposed to building something as naïve as a pure alternative, a solution, an ideal, or something purely positivist.

This critique then, was meant to address the current playground’s and post-critical architecture’s greatest common fault, their propensity to start from scratch. Like many of today’s architectural icons (not too mention the suburbs), the playground is built upon a flat, cleared piece of land, and expresses a natural disdain for history and context. The aim of this book then, was not so much to provide reasons for starting anew, as to end this looping cycle of erasure by providing a context for the future playground: the fast-playground. It was also to delineate a propitious context for the architect to 104

operate: a fast-good.

As post-critical protagonists Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting explained in their now seminal Log essay, “So we hijack this issue, try to give it a shape, but unite it neither by thematic nor ideological consistency. At most it`s organized by sensibility and personal affinity.”1 This document almost subscribes to this early post-criticalism. Though it forgoes recipes and singular praxis, thereby sidestepping the need for ideological foundation, neither does it open itself up to the positivist process that many architects, devoid of sound epistemic, or shifty deconstructive1 grounding practice. What it hopes to offer instead, is a contemporary middle-ground: a target. It puts forward that the hardest and most important thing to discover in order to build, is not what to do, or how to do it, but where to do so, and what to tear down and what to leave standing.

1

Deconstructive Architecture

Though the works of Zaha Hadid, Ghery, Libeskind - their crystals and shards are often identified with deconstruction they are almost dialectically opposite to the1980’s architecture that inspired itself from Derrida’s and Barthes post-structuralist texts. Where post-modernism had introduced the idea of architecture as a collage of historical signs, deconstruction, as translated into architecture, would move beyond notions of historicism and introduce a new complexity of architectural semantics through borrowed methods of disjunction such as, for instance, hierarchy reversal. Its sometimes esoteric character, would itself play a role in encouraging the more positivist philosophy adapted by post-critical practitioners.

This book’s utlimate aim then, is to push the architect to identify those things that share semantic features with fast-food and fast-houses; for the architect to look for things that, in a desire to sell themselves and go with the flow of capital, have become dysfunctional, outright, collapsible fabrications; and for architects to look for things so ingrained in popular culture, that they have been ignored, so that their practice, can position themselves relative to these ubiquitous failures and do some good, do better, or at the very least, do a bit of irony.

Such a direction is timely. It has the meta-profesional ambiton of extending the architect’s agency when said agency is itself frayed by sub-specialties, public apathy, multiplying dependancies, questionable authorship, and deserts of nonarchitectural construction (the suburbs again). At the end of it all, addressing the playground’s failures is intended to be a 105

conduit by which to begin addressing the profession itself. Informed and leveraged by the playstructure’s dysfunctions, the following projects will endeavor to extend the playground’s role through drawing, and extend the architect`s agency in new/old arenas through built projects.

106

107

108

PART 3

GETTING TO BUILD PROJECTS

A N A L T E R N A TI V E T O CU R R E N T PL A Y G R OU N D C AT A L O GU E S THE SITELESS PLAYGROUND What The Siteless Playground illustrates is a way by which to sidestep the restrictive categorization and hyperbolic staging of playground catalogues.

There are no explicit links or themes connecting one drawing to another but their common format, and the deadpan, if sombre objectification of these drawings eschews the presence of smiling children. The result is a minimalist database whose open-ended anti-specificity is meant to help both the reader and the designer generate possibilities.

74,75,76. THE COVERS OF VARIOUS PLAYGROUND CATALOGUES.

114

BUI L D I N G O N E P L A Y G R OU N D ON TOP OF AN OT HE R RADICAL PLAYGROUNDS ‘Radical’ is a vulnerably bloated word. So much so, in fact, that it has already been defined once in this document so far. The following text preludes this section’s drawings by explaining the reasons underlying its present usage.

77. L`HOTEL FOUQUET, BY FRANCOIS EDOUARD, PLAYING WITH THEMES OF REALITY, FICTION AND DUPLICATION.

78. DOUBLE CHIMNEY BY ATELIER BOW-WOW, REINVENTS FAMR AESTHETICS.

115

The adjective ‘Radical’ is here borrowed from the moniker Radical Post-Modernism, which itself attempts to title an agglomeration of recent architectural work led by FAT, François Edouard, Rem Koolhaas, Atelier Bow-Wow, and Herzog & de Meuron. As Charles Jencks explains it, radicality, in architecture at least, is currently the product of three things: communication - the use of metaphor, iconography, symbolism and double coding - ;formal tropes - ornamentation, collage, and juxtaposition - ;and social content - “activism, process and working for the working class.”1 It is this latter attribute that is the most important. It refers to buildings that don’t just fit in, but that provide what Jencks describes as a “contextual counterpoint”2: a critical edge that transforms adjacent buildings and their themes in unexpected ways by providing a kind of you-know-I-know-you-know situation through historical pastiche. In many ways, contrapuntal architecture is a meeting of both post-modern and deconstructive architectural ambitions. As such, the aim of the Radical, is intellectual, sensual, and, as many things contemporary and marginal, it doesn’t shy from embracing “the ugly the rebarbative and the cheapskate”3 as part of its aesthetic.

The following drawings contemplate this radicality. They propose that the sought after intervention does not consist of razing the playground to the ground, but rather of taking a position relative to it.

116

117

126

127

128

EXPAN D I N G A R C HI T E C T U R A L A G E N C Y T H R OU G H BUI LT PROJECTS THE ACADECAP PLAYGROUND 1

The Acadecap1 Playground is an opportunity to investigate and expand the role of the architect, along with that of the playground. Though it is surprising how many architect designed schools forgo to take critical notice of the playstructure in their plans, this is perhaps to be expected. After all, just like architects, most teachers and principals place relatively little importance on the playground to begin with. The Acadecap Playground’s foremost challenge then - more important than design and construction - is the undoing of this apathy through promotion, education, and varied methods of agency. The following is therefore divided into multiple sections that form a chronological overview of this process- from initial consult, to initial designs. Taking place over the course of a spring semester, the ensuing narrative provides reflective snapshots of an ongoing project that will result in a built playground come summer 2013, with the aim of paving the way for similar endeavors in the future.

Acadecap

AcadĂŠmie de la Capitale ( a.k.a. Acadecap) is a small private school of about 70 students from junior kindergarten to grade ten, located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

It makes use of a fenced off area set amidst a parking lot.

129

59. THE ACADECAP PLAYGROUND BLOG, WWW.ACADECAPLAYGROUND.WORDPRESS.COM

Blog The very first step undertaken in this design/advocacy process was the construction of a topical blog and its linkage to the Acadecap website. Its purpose was to introduce the project to parents and teachers, and to give them a platform by which to comment and taken part in the design process.

Unfortunately, though the blog has been featured on the school’s website and newsletter it has so far instigated little discussion. It will nonetheless serve to record the process and initial phases of the design and may receive more traffic as the project’s construction gets underway.

130

Pamphlets There are three pamphlets on the school blog: The Adventure Playground, The Nature Playground, and The Educational Playground(Fig 60,61,62). Each pamphlet gives an overview of their respective typologies through descriptions and multiple case studies. The intent of these pamphlets is to educate parents, and to encourage them to comment on the blog.

60,61,63. EDUCATIONAL PLAYGROUND PAMPHLETS/ CONVERSATION STARTERS (ABOUT A HUNDRED PAGES OF INFORMATION EACH)

Like the blog, these seem to have fallen short of expectation.

Stand alone documents, at this scale of dissemantion at least, seem to initiate little discussion.

Presentations Prezi presentations(Fig.64) were prepaed in order to introduce the project during all-school village meetings. These provided an opportunity to not only outline the goals of the Acadecap Playground, but also to get parents rethinking the worth of playgrounds in general. These presentations were therefore a way to test if the research carried out throughout this thesis made a compelling argument as to the failure of the current model and the opportunities a good playground presented.

The discussions that ensued from the presentations were posi131

64. PREZI PRESENTATION TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS

tive and varied. It was compelling to see how the playground struck a nerve with those present, especially after having received so little feedback from previous efforts. Most parents were keen on a more challenging loose parts playground and some even suggested donations of scrap materials. Many were also intrigued about the more radical prospects of an Adventure Playground. Most importantly, the negative effects of hyper-safety, ostensibly the most contentious topic put forward, were universally agreed upon.

Models Clay sculpting(Fig 65,66,67) succeeded where more traditional model construction techniques failed. Though likely not the most practical way to come up with a viable design, 132

65,66,67. STUDENTS WERE DIVIDED INTO TWO TEAMS AND BUILT THEIR CLAY MODELS ON TOP OF MDF BASES SCALED 1:50. COMPETITION WAS FIERCE.

these models, sculpted during art class, allowed younger age groups to get involved in the project. Future events will result in a piece strong enough for the school to cast, providing a permanent showpiece for both the playground and the school.

This project not only provided momentum, but also a products that serve to illustrate how students can play a part in shaping their environment. Given the context, the design of the playground, and the objects that result from said process, are just as important as the prodcut itself. Moreover, in the end, it is not the models themselves, but the often spirited conversations that ensued while building them that will prove useful in shaping the Acadecap Playground.

Pre-Build/Roller The Roller(Fig.68-73) was yet another way to involve younger age groups in the design process. Different prints can be drawn by children, cut-out by the cnc and re-curled around the main barrel. Designed, with snow in mind, it proved robust enough for recess play and serves as a reminder of the playground project during winter months.

Rubric Every pamphlet contains a rubric that gives each playground typology - Nature, Adventure, and Educational - a mark from one to four concerning play, safety, branding, school ethos, feasibility, and adaptability. It is a way to get parents and teachers thinking of the playground using a set of criteria they may not have been previously aware of. In other words, it serves as an initial communication tool - providing common ground by which to begin assessing different designs.

The marking scheme and reasoning behind each crieteria in 134

68. THE ROLLER AND ITS POTENTIAL EXPLAINED.

135

69-73. THE ROLLER BEING TESTED ON BOTH SNOW AND SAND.

the rubrics were themselves explained by another pamphlet: the Key(Fig.77).

Of all the criteria explained in the Key, ‘branding’ and ‘school ethos’ were the most discussed, both at all school village meetings and with Acadecap’s teachers and staff. As discussion regarding how the playgroud could be used to display student work, intrigue passerby’s and properly represent the school came to the fore, the design process started bleeding over into other parts of Acadecap`s marketing, branding, programs, and aesthetics. In other words, these playground criteria unexpectedly engenderd, and became part of a larger rebranding effort, which is still ongoing.

138

77. THE KEY PAMPHLET

139

140

ENDNOTES Past-Playgrounds 1

Cavallo, Dominick. Muscles and Morals: Organized Playgrounds and Ur ban Reform, 1880-1920. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.

(25)

2

(Ibid 26)

3

(Ibid 40)

4

Solomon, Susan G. American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space. Princeton University press of New England, 2005 (7)

5

(Cavallo 22)

6

(Ibid 26)

7 (Ibid) 8

(Ibid 93)

9

(Ibid 98)

10 (Ibid) 11

(Ibid 97)

12

(Ibid 94)

13

(Ibid 48)

14

(Solomon 7)

15

Lopate, Phillip. Rethinking Robert Moses. 2004. 12 Oc tober 2012.

16

(Solomon 10)

17

(Solomon 53)

18 (Ibid) 19

(Solomon 13)

20

Bengtsson, Arvid. Adventure Playgrounds. London: Crosby Lockwood and Son Ltd, 1972. (12)

141

21

(Ibid 148)

22

Liane Lefaivre, George Hall. Tool, Ground-up City: Play as a Design Tool. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2007. (60)

23 Lacovoni, Alberto. Game Zone. Switzerland: Birkhauser, 2004.

(45) 24

(Ibid 59)

25 (Ibid) 26

(Solomon 23)

27

Amy Ogata, Object Lessons, Educational Toys and Postwar American Culture, presented at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in New York City, February 2003.

28

(Solomon 29)

29 (Ibid) 30

Play Sculpture, Arts and Architecture 71 (August 1954) 12-13.

31

(Solomon 37)

32

Peterson, Grant Tyler. “Theatre Applications: Locations, Event, Futurity.” The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 2011: (385-402.)

33 (Ibid) 34 (Ibid) 35 (Ibid) 36

Rita Reif, Realism Returning to Playground Equipment, New York Times, 4 July 1963

37 (Ibid)

142

38

(Solomon 69)

39

Clare M. Reckert, Education Boom Spurs Take-Overs, New York Times, 12 March

40

Edward Hudson, Soaring Premiums for Risk Coverage Troubling Suburbs, New York Times, 20 March 1977

41

(Solomon 78)

42

Association, Canadian Standards. Children’s Playspaces and Equipment. Ot tawa: C.S.A. Standards, 2012.

43

(Grant 387)

44

Safe Routes: National Center for Safe Routes to School. http://www.safer outespartnership.org/resourcecenter/quick-facts 2004. 2012.

45 (Ibid) 46

Beck, U. 1992. Risk society: Towards a new modernity. Lon don: Sage.

47 Ball, D. 2002. Playgrounds Risks, benefits and choices. Her

Majesty’s Stationery Office. http://www.web.mdx.ac.uk/risk/ docs/playgrounds%20benefits%20risks%20choices.pdf.

48 Tinsworth D, McDonald J. Special Study: Injuries and Deaths

Associated with Children’s Playground Equipment. Wash

ington (DC): U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission; 2001.

49

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Comission. Public Play ground Safety Handbook. (7)

50

Wilkinson, Paul F. Innovation in Play Environments. London: Croom Helm Ltd. , 1980. (35)

51

Smart Planet. n.d. http://http://www.smartplanet.com/photos/how-riskier- playgrounds-may-make-kids-safer-photos/6367130?tag=search-river, 2012.2012

Playground-Semantics 1

(Solomon 3)

2

3

Lamont, Leonie. Fears over McDonald’s School Sponsorship Deal. 13 December 1996. 2012.

Ricci, Colleen. Corporate Sponsorship of Schools. 02 November 2009. 2012.

4

Landscape Structure. Custom Themed Playgrounds. 2011.2012

5

Kincheloe, Joe L. The Sign of the Burger. Philadelphia: Temple University, 2002. (15)

6

(Ibid 17)

7

(Schlosser, Kindle Location 677)

8

(Ibid 138)

9

(Solomon 82)

10

(Brown Kindle Location 416)

143

11

(Andres Duany et al 48)

12

Equipment, Active Playground Catalogue. APE. 2012. 2012. <http://www.apeplayground.com/>. (7)

13

(Solomon 84)

14

(Andres Duany et al 74)

15

Aude-Line Duliere, Clara Wong. Monsterpieces. Singapore: Gordon Goff, 2010. (10)

16

Jane Rendell, Jonathan Hill, Murray Fraser and Mark Dor rian. Critical Architecture. Routlege, 2007. (51)

17

Jacob, Sam. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Beyond the Flatline.â&#x20AC;? Architectural Design (2011): 24-31.

18

(Schlosser Kindle Location 101)

19

(Ibid 839)

20

(Solomon 84)

21

(Ibid 1206)

22

(Solomon 79)

Community, a Proposition 1

Nishat Awan, Tatjana Shneider, Jeremy Till. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Routlege, 2011. (29)

Placeless Playgrounds

144

1

Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol 1.

New York: Penguin, 1990 (168)

2

Ariely, Dan. The Upside of Irrationality. New York: Harper Col lins, 2010. (94-95)

3

Liane Lefaivre, George Hall. Tool, Ground-up City: Play as a Design. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2007.

4

(Arvid Bengtsson 151)

5

6

Dattner, Richard. Design for Play. New York: Reinhld Book Corporation , 1969. (66) (Ibid 68)

7

(Ibid 73)

8 (Ibid) 9

(Ibid 74)

10

(Ibid 68)

11 Conversation with José Ellie, Parks and Recreation Ottawa Director 12

(José Ellie)

13

(Jose Ellie Conversation)

14

(Andres Duany et al. 34)

15

(Ariely 93)

Playless-Playgrounds 1

(Solomon 1)

2 Ellis, M J. Why People Play. Englewood: Prentice Hall, 1973.

(137) 3 “Briton Criticizes U.S. Playgrounds,” New York Times, 16 May 1965.

4

(Ellis 137)

5

Wilkinson, Paul F. Innovation in Play Environments. London: Croom Helm Ltd. , 1980. (35)

6 (Ibid) 7

Burt, Pat Broadhead and Andy. Understanding Young Children’s Learning through Play.

New York: Routlege, 2012. (36)

8 Scrapstore Playpods, Loose-Parts Environments Study.

2011,2012.

9

(Wilkinson 35)

10

Brown, Stuart. Play, how it shapes the brain, opens the imagi nation, and invigorates the soul. New York: Penguin Group, 2009. (8)

11 12

(Burt and Broadhead 32- 40) Public Playground Safety Handbook. 2010. (34)

145

13

(Burt and Broadhead 100)

14 Cecilia Perez and Roger A. Hart, Beyond Playgrounds: Planning for Children`s

Access to the Environment, in Wilkinson, Innovation in Play Environments, (252-257) 15

(Ellis 137-138)

16 Arlene Brett, RObin C.Moore, and Eugene F.Provenzo Jr.,

The Complete Playground Book, Syracse University Press, 1993,(148) 17

(Wilkinson 35)

18

Ellen Beate Hansen Sandester, Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair.

“Children’s Risky Play from an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences.” Evolutionary Psychology (2011): 1

19 (Ibid)

146

20

(Ibid 9)

21

(Sandester and Kennair 13)

22

Public Playground Safety Handbook. (38)

23

(Ibid 9)

24

Donna Thompson, Susan D. Hudson, Heather M. Olsen.

How Safe are Child Care Playgrounds?: A progress Report.

Early childhood News (n.d.).

25

(Sandester and Kennair 12)

26

(Brown 88-89)

27

(Sandester and Kennair 10-11)

28

Public Playground Safety Handbook. (34)

29

(Ibid 38)

30

(Solomon 33)

31

(Dattner 77)

32

(Brown 64)

33 34

Donna Thompson, Susan D. Hudson, Heather M. Olsen.

Ontario. Ontario Day Nurseries Act. 2011. 2012.

35

Scrapstore Playpod, 2006.2011.

36

(Ellis 137)

37

(Brown 110)

A Fast Conclusion 1

Whiting, R.E. Somol and Sarah. “Okay Here’s the Plan.” Log (2005). (5)

Radical-Playgrounds 1 Jencks, Charles. What is Radical?. Architectural Design 2011: (15) 2

(Ibid)

3 (Ibid)

147

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