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Revitalizing Community Space
University Press of New England
September 2005
On Sale: August 24, 2005
276 pages
ISBN: 1584655178
EAN: 9781584655176
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
For years, designers, educators, and community
administrators have clamored for a book that will highlight
the problems with contemporary playgrounds, tender sorely
needed strategies with which to redress them, and stimulate
national debate about today's crisis of undervalued public
space. Susan Solomon's groundbreaking and marvelously
illustrated American Playgrounds is that book. Since the
1970s, Solomon maintains, American playgrounds have
degenerated into irrelevance as cultural artifacts and
educational tools. Imbedded in Solomon's text is a frank
indictment of American attitudes that are stunted by a
heavy-handed emphasis on safety that limits the nature of
play and the vitality of places for public
assembly.
During the past decade an elite few
American architects, landscape architects, and sculptors,
including Stanley Saitowitz, Walter Hood, and Mary Miss,
have pioneered the restoration of aesthetic and
developmental values to play areas for young people. Solomon
appraises these success stories and proposes fresh and
urgent remedies that blend excellent design principles,
innovative planning, and affordability--a vision for the
future of the playground in America. Supplementing her
impeccable command of primary and secondary sources with
hundreds of hours of interviews with designers and clients,
the author confronts a seriously under-developed topic with
powerful and complex arguments rich in social history, law,
theories of play and childhood, and urbanism. Readers will
be inspired--and equipped--to take up the gauntlet of
advocacy for superior American playgrounds.
Accessibly written, American Playgrounds will
fascinate diverse constituencies, including parents,
educators, policymakers, and art, architectural, and
cultural historians. For those commissioning, funding,
designing, and overseeing playgrounds, it will be
indispensable. The book includes a foreword by Martha
Thorne, Associate Curator of the Department of Architecture,
Art Institute of Chicago.
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