Large white dome-like structures, each with multi-coloured windows, perch in four areas atop a rooftop in Istanbul. They’re accessible from within, too, and made up of 275 hexagonal and pentagonal panels. Part of a newly hip bar? An avant garde art installation? Neither, as the author Emmy Watts explains in her tour of 80 similar unlikely assemblages. Instead, these structures form an art-inspired children’s playground. As she puts it: "the most powerful play, like the very best art, encourages creative thinking and a greater understanding of our place in the world". Not just your local grubby slide and badly maintained swings, then.
All images courtesy of Hoxton Mini Press, shared with permission.
Istanbul, Turkey
Melbourne, Australia
Take the New Zealand artist Mike Hewson. He revels in the idea of what he calls “risky play”... Even if all of his playground installations are actually entirely safe. Take the 24 boulders he’s installed in South Bank, Melbourne in Australia. They’re mounted on castor wheels and look as if they could roll away at any moment. A system of hidden steel rods keeps them in place. “It feels open, surprising and unusual,” says Hewson. "Which makes adults and even people in their seventies and eighties feel welcome.”
Kutná Hora, Czechia
In Czechia, there’s a directly artist influenced play area. Setting is the town of Kutná Hora where there is a Mondrian playroom. It takes the artist’s signature grids with primary coloured rectangles, adding fixed cushioned perches on a Mondrian wall-grid. The colours say playground, the backdrop says art, the suggestion is that we take art a little too seriously.
Shenzhen, Hongkong
At ForKids Club in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, we’d dare you to resist a journey through the seasons, in an almost hallucinatory setting. There’s Spring Valley, Summer Beach, Autumn Leaves and Winter Caves in a setting that recalls ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
Shanghai, China
The art of play
‘When we cease to be children,” said the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, "we are already dead.” Perhaps then try the vertiginously tall swing in Shanghai, made up of two steel panels, which balance each other out as you and a companion swing from each end. Your laughter screams life.
Valencia, Spain
It’s strictly art, so Watts does not include the German artist Carsten Höller and his ongoing worldwide project ‘Slides’. Long, winding tubes which you’re invited to woosh down and which paid a very popular visit to London’s Tate Modern. As Höller says of his installation at Luma Arles in France, “a slide is a sculpture that you can travel inside”. To which his gallery, the Gagosian has added: "and experience a unique emotional state situated between pleasure and madness”.
Mianyang, China
We don’t know what Mr Höller charges for his installations and we don’t believe any playground structures are for sale. Far better then, for just £30, to enjoy Emmy Watt’s book from Hoxton Mini Press on your coffee table.
We’ll see you at Tate Modern, next time the slides visit.
Cocktails strictly after the ride.
