Your Custom Text Here
Aldo van Eyck - Playground as a place for the entire community.
Eyck designed and oversaw the construction of numerous playgrounds in the Netherlands. His attention to the human scale & personal experience is delightful, as well as his attempt to blend play into the every day city.
To consider the city is to encounter ourselves.
To encounter the city is to rediscover the child.
If the child rediscovers the city,
the city will rediscover the child –ourselves.
-- Van Eyck, 2008 [1962]:25
Oosterpark, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Eyck is a dutch architect who paid particular attention to the emotional & socio-cultural impacts of architecture & space. He created street and playground infrastructure that was ambiguous in use, and regularly took into consideration the other user groups (teens, adults, elderly).
This image just below starts to connect with me. Though underdeveloped, and quite small, it was crafted with all of the potential users in mind. It is a space for play, as well as relaxing and passage. All ages could find use here. Playgrounds disguised/build into the every day.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
“According to van Eyck, urban playing equipment should be part of the city to the point of disappearing into everyday life and becoming ubiquitous, as it happens with telephone cabins, benches or posts.”
- Nicolas Stutzin
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Amsterdam, Netherlands
BEFORE & AFTER : Amsterdam, Netherlands
Again, I think it really is Eycks approach and thoughtfulness that sets him apart in his designwork, and his writings are well worth getting your hands on. There are a few books out on his work including Seventeen Playgrounds by Denisa Kollarova and Anna van Lingen (which I have on order). His own work, The Playground and the city, is hard to get a hold of save for your library... so go check it out!
Bonus Reading & Sources:
https://walkonwildsideanna.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/aldo-van-eyck-the-playgrounds-and-the-city/
https://childrenoftechnology.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/aldo-van-eyck-the-playgrounds-and-the-city/
https://merijnoudenampsen.org/2013/03/27/aldo-van-eyck-and-the-city-as-playground/
Isamu Noguchi
Isamu Noguchi was an american sculptor & landscape architect who challenged the 'traditional' look of a playground, sometimes successfully and othertimes not so much.
Sculpture or Playground?
Every time I see this photo, it strikes my artistic sense and saddens my playful side. Though this is not a fair assessment of Noguchi as a whole (to be honest my opinion of him is torn between love/hate), when I look at this photo above, and even at some other projects, I always have this sense of isolation, simplicity, disappointment and boredom.
I understand that at least one of his goals were to introduce shapes, colors, form to children through interactive sculpture, but in many cases to make the jump and call it a play-ground seems extreme. Piedmont Park, in Atlanta GA, below, is an example of one of those Noguchi playgrounds that I'm not really a fan of. Swing here. Jump here. Climb here. Most of this below just feels prescriptive and like 'equipment', rather than something more.
Piedmont Park, Atlanta, GA, USA (1)
Piedmont Park, Atlanta, GA, USA (1)
Piedmont Park, Atlanta, GA, USA (1)
Piedmont Park, Atlanta, GA, USA (1)
Let's pivot though and look at the Noguchi I DO like! His work at Moerenuma Park, at Sapporo, Hokkadio, Japan is definitely getting closer to my sentiment of successful sculpture-as-playground, mostly because the sculptures are (a) far more complex in design, (b) open-ended in terms of type of movement use (less clear what I am 'supposed' to do on each individual thing) and (c) more inter-generational / multi-age friendly. Plus The larger sculptures feel less like isolated objects in a field and more like encompassed play spaces.
Moerenuma Park, at Sapporo, Hokkadio, Japan (2)
Moerenuma Park, Sapporo, Japan (2)
Moerenuma Park, Sapporo, Japan (2)
Moerenuma Park, Sapporo, Japan, Photos by Marcus Trimble.
Moerenuma Park, Sapporo, Japan