Playground Equipment as Public Art
Grown-ups need more playtime. With countless studies proving the mental and physical benefits of play for people of all ages, we need to find ways to fit playfulness and activity and laughter into our day-to-day routines. As children our experiences on the playground included a certain amount of problem-solving and risk-taking that is missing from many of the activities of our adult lives. Since grown-ups can't really start frequenting public playgrounds without seeming like creeps, I've been pondering how to make sculptural public art pieces that can double as playground equipment in public spaces. Imagine walking through a public park and coming upon a sculpture composed of colorful bars curved into fun and visually interesting configurations. Standing alone in a patch of green, the monkey bars can appear as both sculpture and playground equipment at the same time, inviting you to climb and swing while also adding beauty to the surrounding space. When separated from the restricted kids area of a usual public playground, suddenly it becomes okay for people of all ages to tap into the energy they used to find so easily as kids.
Making It Real
I started this design process the same way I start all design projects – with a series of very rough and very poorly drawn sketches in my sketchbook. I draw as quickly as possible, not allowing myself to get hung up on details in order to ensure the ideas flow out without the debilitating weight of overthinking or judgement. After many pages like the above scan, I ended with the sketches you see at the bottom. I liked the simplicity of this zipper-like structure, and decided to take the idea to Rhino, a 3D modeling program that would help me construct the design more precisely.
The above screenshots are taken directly from Rhino. You can see how, despite the speed of the original sketches, the final design ended up very similar to that initial idea. With bars spaced every twelve inches, the two sides of the zipper appear to roll over the structural frame and meet in the middle.
After finalizing the design, I rendered it using the built-in renderer within the Rhino program, and settled on yellow as the paint color to make it stand out in the public space.
Visualizing the Final Installation
Since the design is supposed to inspire play and interaction, I think it's important that the visualization is as unpretentious as the object itself. The usual pristine perfectly-lit hyper-realistic renders coming out of most architecture firms these days would create an image of formality when in fact I'm trying to inspire the opposite. I decided to illustrate the monkey bars using more childlike materials, photoshopping the render onto layers of colored papers, more effectively displaying the playful spirit of the design.
This is the first of many sculptural transformations of familiar structures. Whatever I can do to bring more play into our daily lives. Please follow along if you're interested in seeing more designs in the future. Thanks for reading!