Alfred Trachsel, Swiss playground hero

The Netherlands have Aldo van Eyck, but other countries have their playground heroes as well:  Lady Allen Hurtwood in England,Theodor Sorenson in Denmark, Empress Frederick in Germany...and Switzerland has Alfred Trachsel, champion of the 'Robi' or Robinson Crusoe playground.

I've been hoping  to bring his 1959 book "Creative Playgrounds and Recreation Centers"  to you but have been unable to locate his heirs; if you know who they are please do get in touch!  For  now, there are still some copies available on amazon and etc., and you should get one while you can.  

[I also want to take the opportunity to point you to an amazing site devoted to the history of children's playgrounds: architekturfuerkinder by Gabriela Burkhalter.  Playscapes brings you as much history as I can, but Gaby's site is devoted solely to the topic, and is comprehensive and well-informed.  Don't miss it! ]

Trachsel's approach to the playground is unique for being so utterly inclusive...he called his Robi sites "a playground for all age groups" and he meant it:  from babes in arms to the elderly, all gathered together in one play space.    Robinson Crusoe playgrounds are sometimes said to be synonymous with adventure playgrounds, but this isn't historically accurate, according to  Trachsel and coauthor Alfred Ledermann's own definitions.  They saw the classic self-built adventure playground concept as too limited, and wanted to add to it artistic, competitive, and team endeavors as well as social engagement for all ages. 

Trachsel's designs were of playground-as-community-centers, specifically embodying the idea of the 'village tree of old', and incorporating permanent buildings for communal activities.  This concept continued to influence public park design well into the 1970s, and community buildings alongside playgrounds are still often seen in Europe but less commonly here in the US.

Trachsel included 'building areas' ala the classic adventure playground, but also added hard surfaced areas for ball games, wading pools, villages of playhouses and swings for small children, and areas for theatrical and musical performances.  And check out those community chalkboards!

Alfred Trachsel was also the first person (near as I can tell anyway!) to make a play feature out of a natural tree trunk laying on its side in a sandpit, now a common element of the modern natural playscape.

Does your country have a playground hero?  I'd love to hear about them...leave me your ideas in the comments!

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

Michael Grossert’s 3 Playgrounds, 1967–1975

"While the relationship between sculpture and architecture is still fervently being explored, it is worth wondering why the works that emerge from that conversation are more often illustrious museums or art pavilions than utilitarian playgrounds. If this has something to do with a stemming of pedagogical ardor in this century, it is still—take a look at your neighborhood playground—a shame. As Grossert himself said, his projects realized the idea of the “walk-in sculpture” that occupied him for years. Such ideas have neither flagged nor left the minds of our artists, but they are now usually called installations, their province is the museum or gallery, and their population has usually left play far, far behind."

From Quinn Latimer's review of Michael Grossert’s “3 Playgrounds, 1967–1975″ at New Jerseyy, Switzerland.

Swiss sculptor Michael Grossert contributed three playground pieces to the sometimes delirious playground conversation of the mid-century:  a play plaza conceived as a walk-in sculpture (at top, 1967, recently restored)  a climbing sculpture for a  housing park of thirty yellow, red, and blue polyester stackable elements of which half were fixed and half were left for the children to move as they pleased (middle photo, 1971, still in place) and another,  unrealized concrete landscape intended for the Résidence Grétillat in Vitry-sur-Seine, France which survives only as a model (1974) but has obvious links to his 1976 sculpture "lieu dit" (below).

(see also the exhibition's press release, with additional photos, here)

The Vintage Mosaic Playgrounds of Singapore

There are a series of urban playgrounds in Singapore surfaced with square mosaic tiles more reminiscent of bathtub than a playspace; a unique material I haven't seen applied anywhere else quite in this way.

This past January they were the subject of a photography exhibit called "School Of Hard Knocks" by graphic designer Stanley Tan and his wife Antoinette Wong, owners of the Little Drom Store, who started  started taking pictures of the playgrounds about four years ago. They were designed by Mr. Khor Ean Ghee of the Singapore Housing and Development Board (HDB) in the 1970s.  Now 76, he said in an interview that 'We wanted to create something that was distinctive. My boss said to me that all the buildings along Orchard Road were not designed locally. So at least, our playgrounds should be.'

He doesn't elaborate on why the mosaic tile technique was chosen, but I hope it won't be lost...newer playgrounds in Singapore should honor this special local tradition.  Tan regrets that now "no matter where you go, it's the same old thing. We've lost a little of our identity, with the same safe playgrounds manufactured overseas, all over Singapore."

Justin Zhang of CNNGO points out the reason:  "a decade of local playground design came to an abrupt end in 1993. Just months after the local papers ran an exposé about the public playgrounds' poor state and lack of safety standards, a five-year-old boy's thumb was severed while playing on a faulty slide. The boy regained the full use of this thumb, but that marked the end of the play areas. Foreign safety experts were flown in to inspect our playgrounds, which were subsequently declared unsafe.  A massive upgrading exercise was carried out. Concrete structures in sandboxes were replaced with plastic modular ones sitting on rubber mats. The HDB also stopped designing playgrounds and bought them from international suppliers instead."

To celebrate these unique places, the Little Drom Store made playground pins depicting the distinctive structures (I love this idea...the world needs more playground jewelery!)  There's a tiny mosaic dragon, and an elephant, a pelican and a watermelon....all available on their website.  

[First two images by Justin Zhuang for CNNGO, others from the Little Drom Store.]

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.

Builder Boards by Jack McGee, Playground DIY

The 'Builder Boards' from inventor Jack McGee are like Lincoln Logs for the backyard, and you can purchase them in fully and partially finished states from his website, or get the plans to make your own from his $13 how-to book (added to the sidebar Reading List).  OR construct the vintage models straight from this 1953 Modern Mechanix article. 

Don't miss Jack's other inventive DIY projects on his website, including a magnetic marble run, fun house mirror, and a busy box for special needs children. 

"Surfacing guidelines? We don't need no stinkin' surfacing guidelines"

Helen Levitt, New York, c. 1940

Image and caption submitted by reader Peter Hoh...thanks Peter! [original source]

Playtimes: A Century of Children's Games and Rhymes at the British Library

Featuring film and audio clips from as early as 1900, the British Library's Playtimes website "explores the enormous diversity of children’s games as well as the changes and continuities of play through time. Historical footage includes boys playing leapfrog, girls dancing to celebrate the end of World War One and numerous examples of children performing traditional songs and games such as In and Out the Dusty Bluebells, Hopscotch and Mummies and Daddies.

Contemporary footage has been filmed at two primary schools in London and Sheffield and includes children re-enacting TV game shows, computer game-style fights and pop songs."

This is an amazing project!  But unfortunately the BL is very precious about their content...nothing can be downloaded for sharing, which is decidedly not in the spirit of playground games.     

Playground Dollhouse, c. 1910

a beauty from the archives of the Library of Congress.

Leonardo's Seesaw

Playful marginalia from the Codex Leicester of Leonardo da Vinci, now owned by Bill Gates.

Vintage Japanese Playground Swing, c. 1960s

Rounding out our week of swings are these intriguing vintage Japanese constructions...they appear to be homemade out of two traditional frames, and offer a unique combination of swaying bridge and cooperative, standing swing.  I like this.

These are some of the beautiful photos by Richard Tudor Hibbert, including shots of life in Japan in the late '60s,  which can be found at the commemorative blog authored by his son Chris Hibbert. 
Chris says these swings were common in Japan then.

Historic Earthworks for the Playground

So I mentioned in the previous post about the Haye Playground by Mortar and Pestle that its snail-like forms have historic antecedents, which I did a series of posts about some time ago at my garden history blog (here, and here).   Like all turf installations, they require maintenance but are relatively easy to construct for the playground, and a nice way to add historical context.    

The spiraling snail mount was a favorite of the Elizabethans,  included in an entertainment staged for Elizabeth I at Elvetham in 1591 in which the snail mount 'resembleth a monster', and was fired upon with cannon (see it there in the lower right corner)

Sir Francis Bacon's garden (c. 1620) had 'in the very middle, a fair mount, with three ascents, and alleys, enough for four to walk abreast; which I would have to be perfect circles...and the whole mount to be thirty foot high'.   The snail mount was was a logical response to the desire to view a flat garden from a high overlook, and its wide, spiraling paths a practical way for heavily skirted ladies to ascend on a gentle incline.

The best surviving example is at Lyveden New Bield in Northamptonshire, where twin snail mounts arise from a moated landscape surrounding Thomas Tresham's haunting, never-finished Trinitarian retreat.  (Highly, highly recommended for a visit.)

The horticulture students at Cornell University made a smaller construct...I particularly love the idea of a group of people 'walking in' the spiral to the top.

 

An even earlier model is the medieval turf seat (there's a good historical overview at the Met garden blog), which was sometimes just a shaped area of turf, with or without a seat back, but could also be framed into the seat shape by wattles or boards or masonry.  

There's been a resurgence of interest in these 'green sofas' in the last few years....instructions for making a 'sprout couch' can be found at ReadyMade magazine, and there is a commercial kit for making a turf 'chair'.  But I prefer simpler, less literal constructs, like this one from the Goresbrook park in Dangenham:

Or these by environmental artist Angela Ciotti from a 1983 installation in Pennsylvania:

And my favorite is the idyllic example painted by Ilya Repin in the waning, dappled days of the Russian elite.

Also note some earthworks previously featured on the blog:  Maya Lin's wavefield, and  the playhills of Dani Karavan and Parklife London. 

Much more could be done with turf on playgrounds, so take this as inspiration!

Vintage Japanese Playground Elephants

I've made my periodic pilgrimage to the "Old Playground Furniture" group at flickr, and turned up a couple of interesting vintage Japanese designs:  a two-stage elephant slide (photo by yoakenobang), and a mid-mod style elephant seat ([photo by joopy).  As always, if you have additional info on these installations, get in touch!