Playgrounds as a Catalyst for Social Change
Chloe Newton, Jennifer Pindyck, AIA
This project not only encourages a creative space that is friendly for everyone but also strives to unite four generations of adults in order to indirectly cure the tensions in America today through the act of play.
A component of therapy involves the idea that articulation allows one to overcome trauma. We cannot unsee or unfeel the events that happen, but we must strive to move forward. Children are a great example of this movement. In particular, one can view this dynamic in action when watching them at play on slides, swings, and seesaws. Perhaps these both simple and complex structures could provide the same results for adults as well; project idea formed. Playgrounds constantly illustrate reconciliation. The child falls down, they get up. A fellow player injures them, they forgive. This looping makes playgrounds a revolving mechanism for both healing and play. This constant fluctuation of up and down movement has drawn many theorists to extract their mental and physical benefits as a form of architecture. Unfortunately in many instances, the construct as an architecture for adults has either been ignored or mis-articulated as a manifestation that causes the adult nostalgia for their former childhood. This project aspires to correct this misstep and to reinvent the playground appropriately for the mature audience it serves.
