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In 1980 an adventure playground (Byggelegeplads, ‘Builder’)  was demolished under police projection in the densely populated ’Black Square’ of Nørrebro in Copenhagen.  The residents didn’t let it go quietly.

They had installed it themselves on a summer day in1973  by simply driving a truck with boards, nails and tools into the sole open space of their decrepit slum–where the city had showed more interest in parking lots than play provisions.   It was an instant hit; a study showed that at least 100 children used the playground daily.

Initially, the municipal authorities were supportive of the grassroots effort, committing funds to maintain and staff the play space.  Two threats from developers and mayors wielding urban renewal plans were beaten back.    But in spite of a poll of local residents showing 80% support for the retention of the playground, the city insisted in 1980 that it be cleared to make way for ‘improvements’.  The residents blockaded the site, and officials responded by sending 800 police officers to enforce their orders.

Here is the description of what happened next, translated (poorly, my apologies!) from the original Danish here:

“The 29 April initiated the municipality’s total clearing of the area. Under a massive police presence, laborers from Midtsjællands Demolition Company knock down play equipment, and activists have to jump for their lives to avoid being killed. Thousands of residents and activists  formed picket lines and block Noerrebrogade and Åboulevarden. Although it was a peaceful action, the police strike hard and many are sent to the emergency room with concussions and other injuries. About 70 were arrested and charged with “disorderly conduct” or “violence against officials in action”. 14 were placed in solitary confinement for a week as part of the police investigation. When the police left, over one thousand residents and children began rebuilding the playground with materials from the nearby construction site.”

Huzzah for the playground warriors!

“30 April is relatively quiet on the Builder, but Noerrebrogade remains blocked by blockades, which is a consequence of the outrage in the neighborhood over the municipality and the police violent attack.  The 2nd May  large police force was deployed into the neighborhood to remove the barricades. At the same time the police promised not to touch the Builder until after the meeting of the City Council on Monday.Later in the day however they break their promise, and clear one half of the playground.  The rest is cleared after 3 May using over 1000 officers.   The whole neighborhood explodes in anger, and over the afternoon and evening it comes to constant clashes between residents and police. But this time, the police changed strategy. As Chief Inspector Donald Egetved Sorensen said to radio news’ kid gloves been shelved. ‘ There will no  longer be arrests. Instead, the residents of   Noerrebrogade will face chasing police with dogs, club swinging riot cops and motorcycle cops.

Police declared the area a state of emergency and SUSPENDED THE CONSTITUTION  ’We will not tolerate lawlessness in the city. And we will not be gentle. We can not guarantee your safety..crowds will be split by force. We intend to clear the street….and everything will be considered as riots’, says the police loudspeaker vans in the evening.”

A neighborhood association  meeting that evening was dissolved by yet another large police force.  Though some continued to fight, the battle was lost, and  construction for the new apartment complexes commenced.   They’re still there.

Beware of municipal officials bearing ‘improvements’ when something already works.

Additional sources:

English language sources for the battle are difficult to come by, so please correct me if there are any inaccuracies here.  There is an extensive history of the Battle for the Builder online, from which the photos in this post are sourced, but it is in Danish and too large a file for the auto-translator.  If any of my Danish readers would like to help with a translation, I’d love to archive it here at Playscapes.  

Just this past April, the  Blågårdens library recreated the Battle of the Builder…in Legos.  So.  Cool.

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Hello again!  I’ve been away at a conference on science and romantic-era literature…expected I could keep posting whilst I was away but my head was too full of Shelley and Coleridge.  But the conference location afforded me the opportunity to stop by Pittsburgh’s  Carnegie Museum of Art to see the Lozziwurm (unfortunately it was rainy so no children were playing) and the Playground Project exhibit, coordinated by Gabriela Burkhalter of architekturfuerkinder.  It’s difficult to stage an exhibition about playgrounds…how do you move play into the gallery?  But the Playground Project assembles a unique set of  plans, photographs, and rarely-seen video footage of  the sometimes wacky but always innovative world of play space as conceived in the mid twentieth century; from DIY to the avant-garde.   Take particular note of the display on the work of the Ludic Group; plans and photographs of their work has heretofore been difficult to come by.  Congratulations to Gaby and the Carnegie (which, btw, has an astonishing collection in general and you should not fail to stop by if you’re in the area).  There is much more exciting activity on the play-in-museums front…I’ll share more exhibits to add to your summer travel schedule in tomorrow’s post!

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At long, long last there is a crocheted playground by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam in the United States!  The Kaleidoscape opens TODAY, June 13, at the Children’s Museum in Winston-Salem North Carolina.

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Thanks to reader Anna for alerting me to two playful exhibits at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Design for the Modern Child runs May 25  - October 14, 2013 and features mostly toy objects, but also the looming cardboard chimneys of the cardboard cubby house by Australia’s Bennett and Trimble, with plans for self-construction available.  If you go to the exhibit, pick up the plans for us?

All the galleries in the PMA’s Perelman Annex will be devoted to child-themed exhibits for the summer, including Candy-Coated Wonderland, featuring historic children’s fancy dress costumes from the museum’s collection.

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Back when I posted about the idea of merging path and playground, reader Mari sent me a link to the ‘Battery Park’ (Ladeparken or Sirkusparken) by Asplan Viak  which combines a wide promenade and a meandering path with play episodes of varying sizes and styles.    Kudos to them for interpreting the entire 16 acre park as a playable space,  rather than ghettoizing the play equipment into  pockets.  There is no barrier here between path and play and the walkway–which can be walked, biked, or skated– meanders through hills, a toddler play area, and wadeable water features with stepping stones and waterfalls.

The ‘youth corner’ is quite literally a hang-out space with hammocks,  site drainage is converted to a playable water rill, and I particularly like how they used safety surfacing laid as a ‘wave’ for a un-slide that is as much about climbing up as scooting down a hill called the ‘Big Top’.

Because the site has been used as a fairground/circus location for over forty years, the landscape architects referred to this history by using a circus theme expressed in cheerful strong colors.  They wisely used light and abstract references rather than heavy literal ones, however:  the bright red portal at the entrance could be a circus tent or simply an surreal gate but either way it provides a strong sense of entrance into the play/path, marking it out as the special place that it is.

A 2.5 million dollar project funded largely by developers in the surrounding area rather than simply by government revenues (more projects should be like that), Battery Park was voted the best outdoor space in Norway in 2013.  

Photos via asplan viak.  Thanks Mari!

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•  To cool you down on this longest day of summer…designer Svend Stovlbek sent me the above photo of his lovely snowbound playscape, installed in a small village in the north-north of Norway - Latitude: 68.72833333 / Longitude: 16.83944444, which also includes a small stock of  of goats, sheep and chickens!
• URBANITAS BERLIN BARCELONA is organizing  an International Conference:  Childhood and Public Space: a dialogue between the Arts, Education and Urban Design. in Barcelona, 6 to 7 July 2013.  A forum to facilitate dialogue between international professionals; a series of round-table talks, workshops and visits to public spaces, as well as a  symbolic action in one of Barcelona’s city squares.More info:  https://www.facebook.com/events/538006039571175/
• See an update (and more nice photos!) of the Learn-Move-Play-Ground project in Cairo Egypt (originally posted here) at the baladilab site.  Baladilab is a Design-Build studio in form of a Summer School organised by Prof. Barbara Pampe and Vittoria Capresi in cooperation with Susanne Hofmann and the Baupiloten.

• There’s a nice article at Design Observer on “The Imagination of Playgrounds”; yet another sign that playground design is at last receiving the attention it deserves.  (thanks Peter!)
• Playscapes’ friend Jay Beckwith has started blogging himself at playgroundguru.   I look forward to insights from his 40 years of playground experience.
• Andrew Stuck of Walking Geography/Rethinking Cities is devoted to developing techniques and narratives that give a better understanding of the neighborhoods in which we live, play and work.  Don’t miss the final London event Community is King – socialising with smartphones at 16.30 BST on Wednesday 10 July.
• Also thinking along neighborhood lines is the David Suzuki Foundation’s Homegrown National Park Project in Canada, which seeks to enable neighborhoods to green their own spaces by recruiting 21 Neighbourhood Park Rangers  who lead by example.  Found at the Child and Nature Network.  This seems a nature-focused interpretation of Mike Lanza’s Playborhood ideas!

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Leamington Spa’s Design for Pleasure exhibition is the first retrospective of the work of British artist John Bridgeman (1916-2004) whose three-dimensional work  included “gigantic ‘Play Sculptures’ that were installed in playgrounds throughout the West Midlands in the 1960s, which are depicted in large photographs on the walls of the exhibition. They were inspired by Scandinavian sculptures that were being erected in this country at the time in order to provide children with imaginative, tactile objects to play with in parks.” [source]

In conjunction with the exhibition, artists Simon and Tom Bloor have designed a new public art piece–a faceted ‘house’–for the museum’s garden.

All images via simon and tom bloor’s website (a  trove of visual inspiration!)

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Continuing my musings on this idea of play-as-path and path-as-play…there is no better example of this in the ‘natural play’ arena than the barefoot park.  Having led the way in the development of the natural playground,  the European countries–particularly Germany and Austria–have moved on to advocate that natural elements and surfaces be accessible to the unshod foot;  installing several hundred ‘barefoot parks’ over the last decade.

The basic idea is to provide a place for shoe-keeping (at the beginning) and foot-washing (at the end) and a series of activities–from walking a tightrope and balancing on a log to wading through water or mud and stepping through wood shavings or pinecones–that provide different sensations.  Because the basic activity is simply walking,  these are intergenerational playspaces, suitable for feet of all ages!  In large landscapes the sensations might be episodes along a hiking trail (play-as-path again!), integrated with features like balance beams and climbers that strongly overlap with familiar natural playground elements.   But in smaller locations you can simply install a  ’sensation path’ .

Sensation paths can easily be worked into any public playscape, and  most backyards.   You’re simply creating a bounded pathway, with sections of changing surface materials.  Think mulch, then sand, then cobbles then bricks.  In a woodland area, the sections might be bounded by logs and intersected with a stump balance beam. In your own backyard, you could simply alternate mulch and sand and pea gravel, plus a small piece of decking either elevated as a  bridge or simply set flush with the ground.   An optional handrail both helps balance and adds extra play value.

In a more formal or high-use setting, a sensation pathway can be edged with brick or stone and the differing materials set into concrete for durability; this is the case for most Asian sensation paths, which are strongly tied to their tradition of reflexology and are common even in  urban settings.  But in any setting, the sensation path can continue up stairs or down slopes, and wind through existing features like sand or water play areas.

Most public playgrounds have some sort of a path anyway, why not make it a sensation pathway?  When you design a playspace, never plan a feature–even a mundane one–without asking yourself if it can be made playable.   Sometimes, when sensation pathways are designed for children, they’re called ‘tickle paths’.  Add some tall tickly grasses as a border, and you’re there.

For more, see  the helpful site barfusspark, which has a directory of barefoot parks throughout Europe, a design guide for barefoot parks (mostly inspirational photos), sensation path instructions, and a section with thoughts on playground equipment for the barefoot park.   All images are via barfusspark.  See also a nice account of a barfusspark visit at the blog yencamade.  More info on the exemplary sensation pathway at Trentham, Staffordshire in tomorrow’s post!

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When the barefoot walk at the Trentham estate in Staffordshire was installed in 2008 it was England’s first and only, and its highlight was then and is now a nearly knee-high mud bath–carefully sifted to be gentle on the feet.  I especially like that amongst the different stages of the walk–running water, sand, grass, logs, planks, pebbles, flints–you’ll also tread on the site’s history in the form of stone and brick from the remains of the old house.

I learned from the Trentham site that the western approach to the barefoot walk with its emphasis on a variety of natural materials underfoot, was developed by 19th century Bavarian priest Sebastian Kneipp, an early naturopath whose advocacy of barefoot ‘cures’ led to a fad for walking in the dew (and the snow) across Europe and the United States.  See a tongue-in-cheek 1897 critique of the ‘barefoot cranks’ invading Central Park in Munsey Magazine via google books:

“Now the momentous question has arisen: shall we or shall we not allow our public to be invaded by a host of barefoot faddists?  It is all very well to give them carte blanche so far as snow drifts are concerned.  We have snow enough and to spare but urban dew is scarce and valuable and we think it be allowed to remain where it belongs than to be absorbed through the pedal extremities of the Kneipp believers!”

For 2013 Trentham has added new textures, including artificial grass, a new bridge, a water trough and a bed of rubber coals…no word on the dew.

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Thanks to reader Lynn for letting me know that in New Zealand they refer to barefoot paths as ‘tactile paths’ or simply textured paths, and for sending these examples from Henley Kindergarten, Nelson , New Zealand, (South Pacific)–a playground for children aged 2-5 years, and Auckland Point Kindergarten, Nelson , New Zealand, (South Pacific)–a playground for children aged 6 months to two years.

These aren’t just great for walking…I am reminded of the lovely path at the Kate Greenaway Nursery School in Islington, which is more used for trikes but is nice on bare feet as well.  If you’re making a path anyway, be sure to make it tactile!

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So the big news this weekend is that the Playscapes Correspondents are finally up and posting, huzzah!

A big welcome to friends who have posted so far:  Amber in Japan, Ana in Brazil, Eloise in France, Gary in Australia, and Meagan (Cleveland) and Marie (NYC-Central Park Conservancy) from the USofA!

And they’re just the beginning…over the next month we’ll meet many more.  You can follow our correspondents in the sidebar on the front page, as well as through  the dedicated correspondents page, which also features a map of all the postings.

I know it has been a long time coming since the call for correspondents last fall, and I appreciate your patience in the ongoing saga of my web development woes. There will be multiple new features finally rolling out over the next few weeks as Playscapes moves toward being not so much just me talking, but a wonderful gathering of folks from across the world committed to great design for play.

If I got in touch with you last fall, and you (ahem) didn’t return your freelance contract, this is your reminder.  If I DIDN’T get in touch with you, I’m swimming upstream to get there, and you’ll hear from me soon.  If you want to apply or reapply, just use the link on the correspondents page.

I’m so glad to embark on this new phase of the blog’s life, and look forward to building an even richer set of play inspiration from all across the world–to inspire those all across the world–here at Playscapes!

All best playground wishes,

Paige

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“Traveling Rings are a special type of fitness equipment which normally have 8-10 steel rings suspended by chains, each of which is linked to a steel support or beam. One can “travel” from one ring to the next by a combination of arm pulls and leg swings.”

My memory of this type of play equipment is of a set that was suspended over the creek at my summer camp.  But reader Gabe got in touch with much more information: his traveling rings website includes images from a 1905 purveyor of the rings,  as well as selections from a 1900 manual of ‘healthful exercises for girls’ with instructions as to their use.  It highlights one of the things we don’t talk about much in playground history, which is that many early pieces of playground ‘equipment’ were just gymnastic apparatus moved outside!

In more recent cultural history,  Traveling Rings seem to have first been installed on the original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California in the 1960s, and that set may be the only vintage installation remaining in the USA.  Happily, a new set was installed in New York City’s Riverside park in 2005, and another at the Brown Street Park in Providence, Rhode Island in 2010.  I love the performative nature of this piece of equipment, as well as its multigenerational appeal.  Its strong community aspect is clear from Gabe’s website (don’t miss the traveling ring videos!) and traveling rings are definitely due for a renaissance in larger park settings.  If you have seen some Traveling Rings either in the US or abroad (the smaller rings sometimes attached to standard monkey bars don’t count), please add to Gabe’s list by leaving a message in the comments!

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Thinking about A.A. Alexander’s ‘Healthful Exercises for Girls‘ that recommended the traveling rings in 1902 reminds me of the health-history of swings…long before they were associated with the amusement of children (that’s basically a twentieth century idea) swings were for grown-ups.  First in private gardens (ala the famous Fragonard painting The Swing) then in semi-public ‘pleasure gardens’–which had overlaps with what we would today call a spa –places for ‘healthful recreations’.

In 1783,  joining a surge of interest in the effects of kinetics and gravity on health, James Carmichael Smith published An Account of the Effects of Swinging, Employed as a Remedy in the Pulmonary Consumption and Hectic Fever.    Swings were particularly recommended for the elderly and the overweight, as recorded by painter John Nixon (c. 1750-1818) in this watercolor of the swings at Sydney Gardens in Bath, which are now remembered mostly for being nearby to the home of Jane Austen during her family’s residence there.

[image via bonhams]

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I want to highlight some of the great playscapes being posted by our correspondents!  More great playgrounds in a week than I could possibly cover in months *sigh*, I’m loving the additional content!

Natural playground lovers will want to take a look at the fabulous treehouse with Serpent Slide Meagan found at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and the wooden snails at Ibirapuera Park in Sao Paulo, Brasil, posted by Ana.

Contemporary design afficionados, don’t miss the mirrored roof at Toronto’s Underpass Park as covered by Dee, and Peter Pearce’s Curved Space Diamond Structure at Japan’s Hakone Open Air Museum as documented by Amber.  She’ll be doing a full article on Peter Pearce’s work for us soon, and also covered the ultimate tire playground:  Nishi Rokugo Koen.  Daniel in Brisbane begins his posts with the enticing play-shapes formed from resin and rope by artist Amanda Harris in Brisbane.

Eloise from France highlights the innovative work of Carton Plein, including their avant-garde Rock Playground, in Saint-Etienne, and Gary in Australia helps answer a question I got from a reader long ago about the use of text and language on the playground with sensory elements at the Marysville Kin Playscape.

Have a browse round their section of the site.  You can reach it from the menu at the top of the page or from the sidebar, and since it’s still a bit under construction let me know if something doesn’t work or you have any suggestions for improvements!

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The Australian firm of Taylor Cullity Lethlean is getting alot of internet attention for their new ‘Pod Playground’  at the National Arboretum in Canberra.  Starting with the obvious idea of seeds, it tilts surfaces and exaggerates scales (ala Monstrum’s designs)  in a slick 1.7 million construct, but my favorite feature is actually the wavy-edge used on the paths and steps.    TCL  has an interesting body of playground work that reads like a recent-history of architectural play design, beginning with an adventure/nature playground at the Quarries in Yarra constructed in 1992, well before it was cool to use stumps and rocks.  Their innovative Carlton Playground (2000) was a postmodern interpretation of a garden maze, and one of the first posts on this blog!    The Junior School Playground in Melbourne (2002) revisited the ideas of walls as play features in a more confined and younger space, and their intergenerational City Playscape in Adelaide (2009) is a climbable, sittable boneyard of concrete that still meets all safety standards for a ‘normal’ playground.

Many playground firms just repeat themselves, so I’m impressed by how varied TCL’s body of work is, and the Pod Playground is a great addition!

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You say ‘lounge furniture’, I say ‘playground’.  Indoor, padded.  c. 1972 by Verner Panton, now residing at the Pompidou where, alas, climbing on the artwork is not allowed.

[image by Tineke Franssen, via flickr]

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Via instructables, an interesting project for using LEDs to  illuminate the climbing holds that are a standard feature of backyard playsets…connected to a controller so that they can be selectively lit to indicate climbing routes,  play dynamic games, etc.

This is advanced DIY…silicone molds, soldering circuit boards, the whole bit.  But it’s a great idea and I’d love to see it adapted in a simpler way for backyard play.  If you think you can do it, get in touch with me here!  There’s a bit of money involved.

There is also a kickstarter project for a big wall of these at Burning Man 2013, natch.

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It starts with a hill (all good playscapes do):  two imposing rock mountains connected by a footbridge over a ‘gorge’  that allows for great over-under play.  The mountain-boulders are arranged in amphitheatre style steps that are great for climbing, or for seating tired parents close to the play.  I particularly like the mosaic treatment given to the snake that slithers across the playground…its petite tunnels are great for smaller children who will also really enjoy the feel of the pebbled texture, which is perfectly scaled for tiny hands.    Members of Lafayette Park’s surrounding community  particularly requested that the equipment take on a neutral pallet,  which allows the natural coloration in the stone (hand-picked from Montana)  to become the strongest aesthetic element of the space.

13,000 square feet, 1.8 million, beautifully accomplished.

This is a really interesting playground to me.  Because from where I sit at the top of Playground-Observation-Mountain, the Lafayette Park Playground is exactly what I’m seeing develop as the ‘new municipal playground’.  There is still recognizable equipment, but the additional features of a shaped ground-plane (hills are the new swings, remember), natural elements,  water play, and a non-intrusive color scheme are becoming the new standards for city installations.  And that’s a good thing.

[All images from Miller Company Landscape Architects, whose beautiful grassy slide was a very early feature here at Playscapes!]

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Another one of the very early features on Playscapes–back when a google search for ‘natural playgrounds’ turned up about three companies (how things have changed)–was EarthArtist.  When I was in Toronto, I was pleased to get to meet Mike Salisbury, its proprietor and designer, still making playgrounds!   His recent intervention at the supervised visitation area for Family and Children’s Services of Guelph, Ontario Canada took a tiny area of plain paving and grass and made a great small playground…and did you notice its focal point is a hill?  Of course.   I had never really thought about the need for play at social welfare organizations like this…just guessing but I would imagine their play provision is generally pretty poor.  This project shows that how much can be done in a small space.

“This playground is used by up to four families at the same time for supervised visits with their children. With less than 2000 square feet available, the playground had to provide a range of activities for children ages infant to teen during an emotionally charged and potentially stressful situation.

The design had to include numerous seating areas for private conversation. In addition to formal picnic facilities the playground utilized various seat walls, boulders, and cedar post walls to break up the small site and create intimate areas for  reconnecting with family. This “pocket park” includes an accessible creative sand play area, a lookout deck with berm slide, and a traverse wall to provide scalable challenge for a wide range of ages and abilities.

The entire project cost less to build than a standalone prefabricated plastic play structure.”

Design and construction management – 5000 

• Grading and site prep – 1500
• Plant material, sod, garden soil and mulch – 6500

Supply and install:

• 8 Large Limestone boulders – 2000
• Sand and pea gravel safety surface – 800
• Embankment slide – 850
• Cedar Slide deck – 1500
• 17 Cedar Posts – 2000

Total Playground Cost – 20, 150

There were several design features specific to this client’s needs beyond what a regular playground would include: 

• Commercial Traverse Wall – 4500
• Ornamental Fence – 5500
• Unit Paver walkway – 6000
• Concrete work – 7500
• Site furnishings – 4000

Earthartist is also one of the inaugural members of the Playscapes Providers Directory, which I’ve started in answer to the many queries I now receive asking for recommendations as to designers and makers.   If you or your company has previously been featured on the Playscapes blog, you can apply to be included here!

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The ”Off-Ground“  project by Amsterdam-based designers Jair Straschnow and Gitte Nygaard seeks to scale up play elements so that they can be used as alternative public seating.  Their design asks ‘why are benches the only option for public space?’ and uses discarded firehoses within an innovative frame that allows you to adjust the ends of the seat for sitting, lounging or lying down…by forming a low seat, a swing or a hammock.   Brilliant!    See Off-Ground at the Danish Architecture Center in our-favorite-city-for-play, Copenhagen.

[via Gizmodo.  Thanks Eric!]

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