Krabbelknoten (A Mathematical Play Sculpture), Erlebnisland Mathematik Dresden, 2011

From playscapes reader Daniel Lordick of the Geometric Modeling and Visualisation lab at the Dresden University of Technology and the Architectural Representation and Design group at the Berlin Institute of Architecture (great science-art overlaps, there!)  comes news of the "Krabbelknoten", a crawl-through knot installed at the 'Math Adventure Land' in Dresden in 2011.

The play-sculpture, which is sized for either children or adults (and was indeed celebrated by full-size modern dancers at its inauguration), is based on the topological investigations of Professor Ulrich Brehm, also at the Dresden University of Technology, who works on what are essentially sophisticated mathematical knots.  

"A mathematician’s knot differs from everyday knots in that the ends are joined together so that it cannot be undone. It is a closed curve....a surface with two openings but without any edges."

Which quite naturally makes for an interesting climbing experience in which the child traverses not just any tunnel, but a continuous mathematical function.



The above video is only in German, but non-speakers can still appreciate the extensive mathematical modeling and subsequent engineering that went into making this delightful structure. Further information on the knot's development and mathematical basis, including interesting details on safety and transport considerations, are available in pdf form.

Topology is an absolute goldmine for new playground forms, well beyond the mobius strip (which is the mostly commonly known topological space). I'd love to see these and many more knotboxes on the playground.  Thanks Daniel!

Social Sculpture - Playgrounds formed by Players

This idea of social sculpture--works of art that take place in the social realm and require social engagement for their realization--originated with artist and sculptor Josef Beuys in the 1960s and 1970s and has real relevance for how playgrounds were conceived in that time period.   The revitalization of his ideas in the virtual realm of social media means they are also trending to influence the physical environment of the playground again.  

the beginning of Beuys' 7000 Oaks installation via the tate collection

Beuys' definition of social sculpture was more philosophical than, say, Superblue's Giant Knitting Nancy (below), which is nonetheless its intellectual descendent.  Beuys was thinking grandly, about society itself as a giant work of art in which any one person's action changes--'sculpts'--the whole.  He famously insisted that "everyone is an artist" (I often wonder whether those who incessantly refer to themselves as 'creatives' were asleep the day they covered Beuys in design school or if they just don't agree!) and social media has now made his concept self-evident beyond his wildest dreams.

I thought of Beuys this week, during my first experience with jury duty, when a fellow panelist was removed from the courtroom for trying to surreptitiously use her cellphone to photograph herself.  In the jury box.  So she could post it on Facebook.

It reminded me of Beuys because his ideas have taken on a new relevance within social media, with those who ponder how individuals craft their virtual space:  the 'museum of me', if you will, to which my fellow juror was apparently trying to contribute.  Beuys did create tangible, physical works of art, but in spite of the utopianism of his ideals it was deeply introverted; as insulating and insular as the felt he often used as a medium.  And not at all playful. 

But around the same time period artist Allan Kaprow tied the idea of social art creation explicitly to play.   His Happenings of the late 1950s to early 1970s, though inherently temporary, were defined as "A game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing”  and some of these, in vintage photos, can still be read as playgrounds or something like. 

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You may be wondering where I'm going with this.  But I don't think it's a coincidence that the adventure playground--the fullest realization before or since of social sculpture in space for play--had its heyday at the same time that these ideas did.   

from the Children's Play Information service archive

Historians are tempted to make too much of the linear transmission of ideas, to seek to draw orderly lines from one thought-leader to the next, to show ideas building neatly one on another like blocks.

But it is always messier than that, and what is more difficult to trace (and therefore write scholarly articles about) is the effect of concepts that are percolating in the wider culture in a variety of places and with a variety of people; part of the bloodstream, the zeitgeist, the idea ecosystem, but no less powerful for being less definable.

half of the pieces of Michael Grossert's 1971 play sculpture could be moved and stacked at will

So I went back through my old posts and my personal archives of play spaces looking for elements of social sculpting, and they were nearly always from the 1960s and 1970s....or from today.   I think today's playground environment, in keeping with wider cultural trends, is going to move once again towards social, but this time as well towards self, construction.  

So, you proponents of adventure playgrounds fondly reminiscing about the seventies (hello, Greenwich conference attendees!) have reason to hope.  

Do you know of more examples of social sculpture on the playground, readers?  I'm interested in how you think the playgrounds of the future could be socially, or self, constructed in new ways. 

Purchase Planning for Play (1968) digital download for $6 USD via Paypal

'Magic Mountain' Rollercoaster climber, Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth, Duisburg, Germany, 2011

German artists Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth installed an elevated walking path, a frozen roller coaster track that loops to 147 feet above the landscape on a hill in Duisburg Germany.  I love roller coasters, and often look over at the maintenance staircase next to the tracks and wonder what it would be like to climb instead of ride.  Now we know, except for the loop-the-loop of course.  

This is an arduous, grown-up climber.  But I'm really intrigued by how this roller-coaster idea could be adapted as a form for children's playgrounds....the right sort of slopes  could make for an accessible, infinite loop playtrack that is visually appealing and encourages the sort of continuous physical motion that gives kids real physical benefits.

[via dezeen]

Wooden Playscapes by Atelier de Launay

Since 1971, Atelier de Launay have been creating extraordinary sculptural playscapes, mostly of wood, mostly in France.

"Creating a playground is not about placing prefabricated pieces. 
The planning of a playground should form a link between the people and the space. 
Designs come from specific histories and memories of people.   
Each site is given a special answer and a new story.   

To shelter, to lie down, to appear, to swing, to snuggle, to hide, to climb, to crawl, to cross a bridge, to discover, to fall, to get lost, to find, to go down, to go for a walk, to go through a tunnel, to go up, to hang from, to jump, to imagine stories, to make noise, to move, to play games, to perch, to roll, to run, to slide, to stride, to touch, to spin, to turn upside down, to watch, to step, to meet… 

These playgrounds go beyond typical play functions to awaken the active imaginations of all users, from children and teenagers to adults and the elderly.."

Too often when we think of using wood on the playground, we think simply of boards; surely the least interesting expression of what used to be a tree.   The other extreme is to refuse to alter the tree's 'treeness' at all, utilizing only stumps or rough trunk sections. Atelier de Launay celebrates all the possibilities of wood as a medium for playscapes, from climbing boards to realistic animals to Henry Moore-esque abstractions.  And their ideas about honoring site history and memory are ambitious; referencing such things as the the library of Rousseau and four of the artistic studies of Leonardo:  architecture, botany, anatomy, and drape.

Playgrounds are so strongly about the physical that intellectual pursuits don't naturally spring to mind as a design focus.  But I'm fascinated by the sophistication this 'layer of the mind' adds to the playspace, and thinking about how a child might gradually come to realize that the forms on which they are clambering were studied, long ago, by Leonardo;  or how grown-ups might consider the books Rousseau had in his library while their children play.  How might you add an intellectual layer to your playscape?

[Many thanks to Paris-based landscape architects sensomoto for introducing me to Atelier de Launay!] 

Crater Lake, 24° STUDIO, Kobe Japan, 2011

Like all biennale installations, Crater Lake by 24° STUDIO for the Kobe, Japan event is only temporary.  And though meant mostly for grown-up art fair attendees, it incorporates space for climbing, sliding, hiding, performance, quiet play, and even flexibility (the seating stools are movable) in a compelling visual form that can be enjoyed by all ages.  Very, very well done.

Quick, somebody, hire these guys to make a permanent playscape!

[via the contemporist]

Interactive Public Art in Chattanooga Tennessee, Request for Qualifications

Props to the city of Chattanooga for using a grant from the US National Endowment for the Arts to fund a new urban park of playful, interactive sculpture! 

They are seeking qualifications from artists/artist teams for the park, to be called 'The Main Terrain', in the revitalized Southside district of downtown Chattanooga.  Up to five artists/artist teams will be short-listed, with a $3,000 stipend to be used for design proposal and travel. Total project budget for public art is $210,000.  The winning artists/teams will collaborate on a project team that includes the City of Chattanooga, a landscape architect and Public Art Chattanooga.

The RFQ is open to all established professional artists/artist teams, designers, landscape architects and architects over the age of 18 who currently reside in the United States. Deadline:  applications must be received by mail, hand delivery or electronically by October 25, 2011, 4:00 pm EST. 

 I hope to seem some amazing playable sculptures out of this!

More information at public art chattanooga. 

Castle at Wilson Park, Fayetteville Arkansas USA, Frank Williams, 1980

 I've just done an interview for a parks and recs magazine in which I noted the fact that standardized 'kit' playgrounds rarely worm themselves into a neighborhood's communal heart the way a playscape that is unique to its site can. 

In 1970 Fayetteville held a contest to improve the area around a natural spring. Artist and sculptor Frank Williams presented a scale model for a "fantasy play castle sculpture garden" that would eventually be known simply as "The Castle".  Frank called it  "Seven Points" and designed seven cement castellations  and a rock in the foot bridge with the number "7" in it.

Inspired by Gaudi and thinking that a structure already in 'faux decay' would little show the ravages of time and children, Frank embarked on the project with the support of the Arkansas Arts Council.  Incredibly, Williams did most of the ferro-cement and natural stone construction himself, outlasting multiple assistants and extending a three month project to a full year. 

Williams' website details the playground's constructions, and the trials associated with it:

"I had plans for landscaping and plantings that had to be scrapped. At least two bronze sculptures I had designed were dropped. And untold options and possibilities were ditched due to the practical concerns of time and money.

I pushed and we hurried but when the money was out helpers had practical choices to make and some had to find other paying jobs...ultimately it was me alone cleaning up and trying to plant a few purchased and donated plants and trees with the donated aide of a local landscaper.

But we did have the opening over that hot weekend."

Perseverance paid off in a place envisioned for both the 'young of age and the young of heart'; thirty years of children playing, teenagers hanging out, tired grown-ups dangling their feet in the water, and countless graduation and wedding photographs taken there by the citizens of Fayetteville.  How many playgrounds are special enough that the community wants to mark its special moments there?

At the castle's 25th anniversary celebration, Williams noted that it is a place "where many children forget about television and video games.” Amidst all the hand-wringing about childhood obesity, we need to acknowledge that grown-up playground makers aren't always making spaces that are interesting enough to keep children active.  Saying 'kids should play outside!' is the easy part.   Making places so engaging that they forget about television and video games is more difficult, but so important.

Lekeskuptur, Hugo Wathne, Stavanger Norway, 1980

Norwegian sculptor Hugo Wathne painted his concrete forms in bright colors for a sunny, open playscape at Auglend School in Stavanger, but left them unadorned for a stumble-upon glade in Middleheim Park, Antwerp.  Do any of my Norwegian readers know if these are still in place?

La ville molle (Soft City), Raum, Bourges France, 2010

La ville molle (part III) from Raum Raum on Vimeo.

We take the ground plane for granted, assuming that it won't shift beneath our feet.
But Raum Architecture's installation "questions the harshness of the city and the ground's capacity to change".

Their surprising, playful intervention was co-produced by the National School of Art de Bourges, the FRAC Centre and carried out with the collaboration of the city of Bourges and its downtown Council district.

Wondering about its secrets?  All is revealed in the construction video below... 
 

La ville molle (part I & II) from Raum Raum on Vimeo.

[Musical accompaniment by the french band "Mansfield Tya" (http://www.mansfieldtya.com/)]

Octetra, Isamu Noguchi, 1968

Dattner's structure are themselves derivative in some ways of Isamu Noguchi's Octetra, originally cast in concrete and installed near the Spoleto Cathedral in Italy in 1968 and then subsequently re-made in fiberglass and installed at numerous locations around the world (I'm not quite sure how this works...are all of these considered 'Noguchi's'?)   While honoring Noguchi as a sculptor, one must be careful of being too deferential to him as a playground designer.  Octetra is scaled for monumentality rather than for children; compare its size to Dattner's construct.  And the need to set it up on blocks to enable entry from beneath is an awkward compromise between the sculpture and the play.  (Note that the later fiberglass versions simply rest on the ground; improving the sculpture but removing a play feature).

Someday I will have the time to write an entire blogpost on Noguchi's playgrounds, but today, waiting for a train in Paddington Station, is not that day.  For now I will just say that as with Octetra, it is the sculptural qualities that drive even his play designs, not the play experience itself, which leads to an uneasy rapprochement between the visual and the play experience.

This is an important issue in the design of public features intended to be experienced both as sculpture and as playscape.  Which part of that experience is most important?  Is it possible to reach a greater unity between them than Noguchi did with  Octetra?  Do you know of public play sculptures that do?

Playable sculpture by Robert Tully, Colorado

One of many good thoughts currently percolating around the idea of playable urban space has to do with the role of public art, which judging by my email alot of you are thinking about.   A shift in thinking of public art as something to be interacted with rather than gazed upon could play a significant role in moving the discussion of playable space away from demarcation (this area is a playground, this area is not) towards gradient :  a variety of playable spaces along a spectrum that extends from no-play (obviously say, railroad tracks) to devoted-to-play spaces (playgrounds) , but with all conceivable points in between. 

Reader and London playground chat attendee Lianne sent me the work of Robert Tully with which I'm quite impressed, not least because it so beautifully expresses the history and genius loci of Colorado, but also because it has so many creative, playable ideas from which to learn.

"Tradebeads" (Fort Collins, Colorado, cobblestones strung on stainless steel rods)

"Ripple Effects" (also Fort Collins, playable earthforms reclaiming a former dump site)

"Listening Stones" (Longmont, Colorado, parabolic seat carved into a river boulder to listen to the sound of the water)

 

"Gather Enough People" (cooperative play also in Longmont, instructions in the form of a riddle lead participants to open the scupture at the top by gathering three or more on the platform)

"Prairie Underground" along the same trail in Longmont lets visitors discover carved grounddwellers...the half-hidden nature of these carvings would delight children.  There need to be more 'hidden' things on playgrounds that can be discovered, over and over again.

"Kestrel's Way", same Longmont trail (I really must visit)--simply bending a standard trail out over a small incline provides a vertiginous experience that children love...the feeling of risk in a still-safe setting.  

"Waterline", same trail, reminds that 'natural playgrounds' must do more than plop down a boulder in some grass and call it good.  Adding a carving provides scope for endless crayon tracings!

"Visions born by this River", Gates Crescent Park by Children's Museum, Denver, uses river boulders with minimal carvings to represent native animals, inviting the children to use their imagination to complete the scene.

"Visions" is one of several dedicated playgrounds by Tully; another is the "Miner's Dream" in Breckenridge, Colorado.   Keeping on this idea of a gradient, I think it is significant that the dedicated playground space is only a part of a collection of eight pieces that form "a landscape based on history of the mining town, nature and imagination. Five pieces are in a playground while three are outside the playground on the plaza and in the river, breaking the usual playground boundary to become an overall sculpture about creating one's future from past materials."  They include "Human Scale," an interactive sculpture,with platforms that people can stand on like a giant miner's balance. Old iron wheels can be turned to move stone animals as counterweights and balance with an adult, and there is also a small "Three-Way Scale," designed for more complex balancing with sand.  "Slide and Steps," is a polished glacial boulder for sliding, and historic narrow guage rails are used as balance beams.  The stone and wood "History House" is sunken so kids can play in the attic, and the "Rock Person" provides the negative space of the human figure.

This has been a long post, but I wanted to include so many of Tully's amazing ideas...inspirational for playscapes everywhere.  All photos and text from Robert Tully's website.