Friday, April 29, 2011

Transparency on the playground

Apologies for the radio silence this week...occasionally other demands overtake me!  
 
Growing up, the science museum in my state had a transparent playground structure that I thought looked like soap bubbles....and which I was reminded of by the amazing sticky-tape spaces constructed by Vienna and Zagreb based architects Numen/For Use.  I'm interested in how the creative use of transparency can heighten the instinctive feeling of vertigo and awareness of the possibility of falling...allowing a space that is quite safe to take on air of risk and the uncanny.  Which of course is far more interesting to children.   
  






[vintage bubble playground structures from a c. 1970s domus magazine, posted on flickr by leonardo.bonnani]

[photos of the Numen installations are all over the web, these are from source and source]

[search youtube for many more videos of numen's sticky-tape work, including construction of their projects]

 

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