on site review 44: play :: contents

Ruth Oldham and Emelie Queney: en jeu

Stephanie White: Air mindedness

Darine Choueiri: Play in wartime schoolscapes

Samer Wanan: Child's play in the Palestinian landscape

Yvonne Singer: (for)play and wordplay

Yiou Wang: Minotaur plays Ludius Loci:

Ivan Hernandez Quintela: Play ground

Amra Alagic, Lara Kurosky and Leah Dykstra: Nest and Branch

Aurore Maren: Play in three acts

Carol Kleinfeldt: BMX Supercross Legacy Track

Tim Ingleby: Gamechangers

Harrison Lane: Joy as an act of resistance

architecture and play

There are several ways to think about play, the most obvious one being the one which children, with great imagination and entertainment, do, learning as they go. Then there is organised play, sports and such, games involving opposing players of great prowess, skill and combativeness. And somewhere inbetween is the play that involves messing around for the sake of meaningless joy: play for the sake of play.

There is another use of the word play, which is the looseness in a system. Mechanical parts that have some play are not highly machined, or if they once were are now worn, introducing a play between parts. This is very interesting, that the word play describes this sloppiness, where exactitude is not a factor.

The architecture of play is linked indubitably to Aldo van Eyck’s schools and playgrounds, and from there all the theories of education, learning and play that so dominated the twentieth century. Increasingly, either through psychology, ideology or health and safety regulations, play has become channelled, scheduled – something closer to a machined part in a busy life than poking about a ditch with a stick. for hours. till dinner time.

Somewhere in all of this is the sense that joy is for children, that eventually one puts aside childish things and gets on with some other form of life, usually something more grim, less joyous. Something we see in the tragic children of war who have been forced to put aside childish things almost from birth.

In the practice of architecture do we have works conceived, designed and built with joy throughout the whole process? Where the sense of play is there from the start, an architecture of simple pleasures, of ridiculous time-wasting that is vastly pleasurable? This transcends program and looks squarely at the process of making architecture.

What is the relationship between architecture and play?