• The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA sends news of their upcoming focus on play for the 2013 Carnegie International, for which they have installed a 'Lozziwurm' by Swiss artist Yvan Pestalozzi, who developed the 'wurm' in 1972.  It's in conjunction with the "Playground Project"; an  exhibition on the history of post-war playgrounds by Gabriela Burkharter of Architekturfuerkinder. The Playground Project will be on view for museum visitors from June 10 to August 23, 2013, and then October 4, 2013, to March 16, 2014.  See also a great post on the Lozziwurm at daddytypes.

• Playscapes friend Jay Beckwith sent me an email wondering if Maria Montessori was the originator of the cube-like climbing frames from last week.  I don't know...do any of my Montessori readers?

• The trend for massive interior slides in the homes of the super-rich continues with a 4-story Carsten Holler-esque construct in Manhattan.  When slides become a vanity item, you know the profile of play architecture has been raised.

• There's a project on indiegogo to raise money to restore the Bruce Goff Playtower in Bartlesville Oklahoma (featured previously on the blog); their goal is $10,000.  Consider helping to save this play icon of the plains!

• The new line of tiles by Motawa of Charley Harper's geometric wildlife drawings would be so beautiful as a playscape accent.... (via PrairieMod).

Creative, localized slides in Gothenburg, Sweden via the blog finelittleday.  Beautiful siting of that tunnel slide…

The post Slides of Gothenburg, Sweden appeared first on Playscapes.

• The Child and Nature Network is looking for a new executive director... if you’re passionate about nature-based play, this might be a great fit for you!

• The lovely folks at Thoughtbarn have been commissioned to do a larger version of their PlayHive for ThinkMakeDo at the Austin Children’s Museum!  The PlayHive plans Thoughtbarn provided for Aldo van Eyck’s birthday last year have been downloaded via Playscapes over 20,000 times, and that’s how the Children’s Museum found Thoughtbarn.  This year’s Aldo celebration is fast approaching (March 16)…if you’d like to submit a DIY plan as a firm, an organization, or an individual, do get in touch.

• Modern Mechanix unearths more strange play equipment of the past…I’m all for a balance of risk and play but these seem unnecessarily edgy and maybe not even that fun.

• Sarasota Springs, Utah, on the other hand, has stepped out and installed a 30-foot high play pyramid (take that, all you timid town councils).  Read their take on the liability issues involved: “It turns out the trick to avoiding liability lawsuits had as much to do with adequate signage as it did the available play equipment.” Well hooray for signage, then! (via Daddytypes)
• While in Toronto I was pleased to make the acquaintance of Willy Chyr, whose fantastically playful balloon sculptures incorporate the generative randomness of natural processes, and use volunteers in their construction.

• ArtofSpace in Springfield Missouri continues the trend for playful knitting with inside climbing nets knit of plastic.  Be sure to watch the video of their construction.

• Designer Vanessa van Dam made a typeface based on the playground designs of our-hero-Aldo van Eyck.  I love this!

The post Play Notes (to be an occasional weekend-ish feature of Playscapes) appeared first on Playscapes.

““The site of the PREVI international architecture competition was located some kilometres north of the built border of Lima in the 1960s…The competition brief of 1968 was to design a high-density housing scheme comprising 1,500 family units, each enabling the possibility of further growth….Today, 40 years later, the …The original architecture has almost disappeared…The conception of the voids by Peter Land’s master plan has survived the growth of the development…
A large recreation area is situated in one corner of the PREVI, next to the abandoned factory complex of Montagne. A sandy area accommodates a football pitch and a basketball court. Beyond the football pitch is the playground, framed by prefabricated benches.

The playground consists mainly of a family of different objects installed on a flat plot. Slim steel arches held together by slight bridges suggest a fragile tunnel that invites children to climb, hang on or slip through it. Another climbing frame beside it is a hybrid grid of vertical and horizontal steel bars, frames of cubes stacked one on top of another. Contrasting with these lightweight constructions is a large concrete base, a sloping sunken semi-circle overlooking the pitch. In the middle of it stands a slide, its chute fixed by ties…

This assembly of highly static, geometric abstract objects, their gravity-defying impression of lightness and the sculptured border all recall the playgrounds of post-war Amsterdam designed by Aldo van Eyck for Amsterdam’s Department of Public Works. Van Eyck addressed the issue of interstitial voids and defined space and place, producing interventions that were both numerous and ephemeral. His ambition of creating a space for children that was “more durable than snow” was realized in the desert of Lima.”
excerpted from WALKWAYS, OASES AND PLAYGROUNDS – COLLECTIVE SPACES IN THE PREVI
by Marianne Baumgartner at digital architectural papers.

See also a domus article on the Previ project

The post The Playgrounds of Previ, Aldo van Eyck, Lima Peru, 1974 appeared first on Playscapes.

Sol Lewitt, Cubic Construction, 1971 image by MoMA via archpaper

And having seen the playground climber in Previ, I’ll leave you to your own conclusions about the inspiration of conceptual artist Sol Lewitt…

The post Sol Lewitt – Playground maker? appeared first on Playscapes.

I’ve been thinking about the climbing frames of Florian Aigner, too, which are a sort of distortion of the tidy traditional boxes below.  At London for Play I talked about the idea of ‘feel risky play safe’, in which the impression of risk is created on the playground even though all pertinent safety standards are covered.  A key way to do this is with tilted surfaces.

Aigner makes climbers that look like they’re going to fall down.  And therein lies the excitement; the sense of daring in the climbing.

Like Helle Nebelong, Florian maintains that excessively ‘safe’ playgrounds are actually more dangerous, because they lead to inattentiveness:  ”Once the child thinks “I can do it all,  I don’t need to pay attention’, he becomes careless.”  In Alger’s playgrounds, though “there are simply no flat surfaces…only stumbling blocks….the children must always be careful and that’s why nothing will happen.”

Aigner works only in oak set into steel tubes at the ground.  He eschews traditional bright playground colors so that his climbers ‘disappear’, enhancing the child’s feeling of discovering the space.

Ooh, that’s a new learning for me.  I hadn’t thought before about how static, how rigid the lines of a brightly colored playground are, and how that could potentially make the spaces feel so contrived and obvious.

Most of the references to Aigner’s work are in German, so I had difficulty finding the locations of his climbers, though apparently there are many scattered about the world.   If you know the location of an Aigner climbing tower (or if you have better photos than these low res ones), get in touch!

The post The Climbing Towers of Florian Aigner appeared first on Playscapes.

• The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA sends news of their upcoming focus on play for the 2013 Carnegie International, for which they have installed a ‘Lozziwurm‘ by Swiss artist Yvan Pestalozzi, who developed the ‘wurm’ in 1972.  It’s in conjunction with the “Playground Project”; an  exhibition on the history of post-war playgrounds by Gabriela Burkharter of Architekturfuerkinder. The Playground Project will be on view for museum visitors from June 10 to August 23, 2013, and then October 4, 2013, to March 16, 2014.  See also a great post on the Lozziwurm at daddytypes.

• Playscapes friend Jay Beckwith sent me an email wondering if Maria Montessori was the originator of the cube-like climbing frames from last week.  I don’t know…do any of my Montessori readers?

• The trend for massive interior slides in the homes of the super-rich continues with a 4-story Carsten Holler-esque construct in Manhattan.  When slides become a vanity item, you know the profile of play architecture has been raised.

• There’s a project on indiegogo to raise money to restore the Bruce Goff Playtower in Bartlesville Oklahoma (featured previously on the blog); their goal is $10,000.  Consider helping to save this play icon of the plains!

• The new line of tiles by Motawa of Charley Harper’s geometric wildlife drawings would be so beautiful as a playscape accent…. (via PrairieMod).

The post Play Notes (and a Lozziwurm) for your March 9 2013 weekend appeared first on Playscapes.

Playground innovation in the 1960s and 1970s was driven in part by the availability of new  materials that could be used to make new forms…the Lozziwurm, for example, being a play form that was simply impossible before the advent of plastics.

We’re in a similar era now, with a much greater array of new materials than in the mid-century, and I’m a bit disappointed to not see more playground applications for say, high tensile strength carbon fiber composites or thermochromic materials.

So I find Daniel Lymann’s ‘Sway’d’ installation inspirational.  It’s a high-tech, urban representation of the way  interaction with a field of grass causes a ripple of swaying motion to spread throughout the field ….only in this case the slender blades of a molybdenum-nylon blend are strong enough to support even an adult’s weight.

If you’re one of my many student readers, be thinking creatively about how to use new materials to create new ways of playing…and let me know what you’re working on!

[all photos via daniel lymann]

The post Sway’d by Daniel Lymann and New Materials on the Playground appeared first on Playscapes.

Ingredients:

2 schools (El Khods in Ard El Lewa and  Shoubra)

25 students from Egypt

11 students from Germany

9 cmq of bricks

12 precompressed concrete tubes

25 trees

65 children

12 days of planning, designing, implementing

2 courtyards to be re-designed

1 cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Education

(Prof. Barbara Pampe & Prof. Vittoria Capresi, Architecture and Urban Design Program of the German University Cairo in cooperation with Prof. Susanne Hofmann and the Baupiloten (Technical University Berlin) and Omar Nagati (Cluster Cairo)

Wood and brick boxes are used to make a series of in-out-over-under spaces for two primary school courtyards in Cairo, and they did not neglect to add plants!   Simple, durable, clever, fun, by Susanne Hofmann Architekten, who have appeared on the blog before for the inside-out spaces of their Taka Taku Land Preschool.

It’s fascinating how these boxes are essentially a simplified version of the far more elaborate interior play wall Susanne Hofmann Architekten built for a primary school in the first world, and what that says about the difference and distance between these two school playscapes.  Both are beautiful.

The post Learn-Move-Play-Ground, Susanne Hofman Architekten and Baupiloten, Cairo Egypt, 2012 appeared first on Playscapes.

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Beautiful vintage photo from National Geographic, by W. Robert Moore, of play in Korean c. 1931.

We have come to think of a seesaw as something to sit on. But this form, seen not just in the Orient but also in Victorian playspaces, is really about jumping. Its low profile to the ground removes some of the safety concerns that have grown up around ‘seated’ seesaws, and I’d like to see playmakers thinking about using these jumping boards more often.

The post SeeSaw Playground, Korea, 1931 appeared first on Playscapes.

I’ve long admired this small-town playground by German landscape architect Stefan Laport for the lessons it holds for small playgrounds (backyards, schools, churches) everywhere.  It’s a simple arrangement of elements that can be adapted to a variety of sites, styles, and budgets.

1.  Start with a hill!   Playgrounds-should-not-be-flat, remember, and when in doubt start with a hill as the organizing feature of any playscape.  Make it as big as your site and budget allows; a bigger hill is also great for bikes

and winter sports.

2.  Add different ways to go up and down the hill.  The Hornbach playground has an enticing set of large and small boulders that allow different routes, and also conveniently serve as benches on the lower part of the hill.  A child can also just scramble/bike/sled up and down the grassy sides, or creep up through the shrubberies.  Other options could be a stump scramble, or a rope-banister to pull up on hand-over-hand, or  a flying fox with which to descend.    The slide descent could also be varied according to the size and slope of the hill;  this same sort of arrangement would work wonderfully with a wide multi-user slide, for example.

3.  Make a feature on top of the hill.  To a small child, the hill is a big challenge and there should be something at the top worthy of the climb.  The house on the top of the Hornbach hill appropriately references the historic shapes and stoneworks of the monastery town.  But you can easily see how it could be replaced by a house with a completely different local reference  (like a log house, in certain American contexts), or by a far more contemporary design (an avant-garde playhouse that doesn’t necessarily even look like a house, or a playable sculpture), and could be more  or less expensive as budget dictates.

4.  Spill sand at the bottom of the hill.    The playground started in the sandpit, and sand both honors this history and the fact that sand and loose parts play are still essential on the playground.  The sandpit could also have boulders and stumps, or a water feature, or a small balance beam,  or any number of other features, and can be larger or smaller as necessary, but should always have loose parts available!

This mini-formula for a playspace can be carried out at less expense and difficulty than a set of standardized equipment, but note that this design by no means excludes them completely; it integrates easily with the addition of things like swings for dynamic motion or a net climber for upper body development, or adventure and natural playground elements like a den-building area or a felled tree.    I”d love to see more small schools, day-care centers, and churches use this ‘house on a hill’  playscape as a model, adapting it for their needs and local context,  instead of defaulting to a catalogue purchase.

The post The House on a Hill playscape: lessons from the Hornbach Playground, Germany, Stefan Laport appeared first on Playscapes.

One of the comments about the “House on a Hill” playscape from Germany was that it didn’t meet US safety standards.   Which of course is true, and points to the dramatically different perspective on what play spaces should do and be, and on the place of risk and safety within that, in those two countries.  So behold:   the difference between a random google image search for ‘playground’, and one for ‘spielplatz’ (German for playground).  Spielplatz has  more hills, more water, more wood (less plastic), more things that look dangerous.  Telling, huh?

The post Spielplatz vs. Playground appeared first on Playscapes.

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Proin dapibus eleifend egestas. Duis volutpat venenatis nulla tincidunt sagittis. Quisque non sapien orci. Nam et ligula metus. Nunc sit amet mi sit amet turpis vulputate posuere at eu nulla. Cras aliquet nulla sit amet nisl accumsan vel fermentum magna laoreet. Maecenas ac blandit odio. Sed faucibus tristique neque, euismod pharetra mi egestas ut. Praesent scelerisque lorem vel enim venenatis sagittis. Duis nec massa et nulla imperdiet pellentesque. Sed rutrum, velit et tristique condimentum, lorem arcu convallis lacus, at sodales arcu sem et dui. Nulla vehicula dapibus justo, a posuere risus viverra at. Mauris aliquam eros elit.

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The post Talking About Play Grounds appeared first on Playscapes.

““The site of the PREVI international architecture competition was located some kilometres north of the built border of Lima in the 1960s…The competition brief of 1968 was to design a high-density housing scheme comprising 1,500 family units, each enabling the possibility of further growth….Today, 40 years later, the …The original architecture has almost disappeared…The conception of the voids by Peter Land’s master plan has survived the growth of the development…
A large recreation area is situated in one corner of the PREVI, next to the abandoned factory complex of Montagne. A sandy area accommodates a football pitch and a basketball court. Beyond the football pitch is the playground, framed by prefabricated benches.

The playground consists mainly of a family of different objects installed on a flat plot. Slim steel arches held together by slight bridges suggest a fragile tunnel that invites children to climb, hang on or slip through it. Another climbing frame beside it is a hybrid grid of vertical and horizontal steel bars, frames of cubes stacked one on top of another. Contrasting with these lightweight constructions is a large concrete base, a sloping sunken semi-circle overlooking the pitch. In the middle of it stands a slide, its chute fixed by ties…

This assembly of highly static, geometric abstract objects, their gravity-defying impression of lightness and the sculptured border all recall the playgrounds of post-war Amsterdam designed by Aldo van Eyck for Amsterdam’s Department of Public Works. Van Eyck addressed the issue of interstitial voids and defined space and place, producing interventions that were both numerous and ephemeral. His ambition of creating a space for children that was “more durable than snow” was realized in the desert of Lima.”
excerpted from WALKWAYS, OASES AND PLAYGROUNDS – COLLECTIVE SPACES IN THE PREVI
by Marianne Baumgartner at digital architectural papers.

See also a domus article on the Previ project

The post The Playgrounds of Previ, Aldo van Eyck, Lima Peru, 1974 appeared first on Playscapes.