KEN WORPOLE
THE PLAYGROUNDS AND THE CITY
The Royal Institute of British Architects - RIBA
66 Portland Place - London
21/7/2015, 6.30pm to 7.30pm
In 1943 the Danish landscape architect, C.Th. Sørensen, established the first 'junk playground' in a suburb of Copenhagen, soon to inspire the adventure playground movement in Britain. In 1945, Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck, developed a programme of 700 street-corner playgrounds in post-war Amsterdam. The anarchist adventure playground and the modernist, fixed-equipment playground as designed by Van Eyck became accepted models throughout Europe, including Britain. But how did progressive ideals within education and town planning shape these spaces?
In this illustrated talk, writer Ken Worpole discusses the rich history of playground design from an international perspective, exploring the ebb and flow of ideas between Northern Europe and Britain, discussing how cities both need playgrounds, but also need to become playgrounds in their own right, as Sørensen and Van Eyck equally desired.
Ken Worpole is a writer on architecture, landscape and social policy. Ken has served on the UK government’s Urban Green Spaces Task Force, on the Expert Panel of the Heritage Lottery Fund, and was adviser to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). His publications include Here Comes the Sun: Architecture and Public Space in Twentieth Century European Culture (2001), Last Landscapes: The Architecture of the Cemetery in the West (2003), Contemporary Library Architecture: A Planning and Design Guide (2013) and The New English Landscape with photographer Jason Orton (2013).
THE PLAYGROUNDS AND THE CITY
The Royal Institute of British Architects - RIBA
66 Portland Place - London
21/7/2015, 6.30pm to 7.30pm
In 1943 the Danish landscape architect, C.Th. Sørensen, established the first 'junk playground' in a suburb of Copenhagen, soon to inspire the adventure playground movement in Britain. In 1945, Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck, developed a programme of 700 street-corner playgrounds in post-war Amsterdam. The anarchist adventure playground and the modernist, fixed-equipment playground as designed by Van Eyck became accepted models throughout Europe, including Britain. But how did progressive ideals within education and town planning shape these spaces?
In this illustrated talk, writer Ken Worpole discusses the rich history of playground design from an international perspective, exploring the ebb and flow of ideas between Northern Europe and Britain, discussing how cities both need playgrounds, but also need to become playgrounds in their own right, as Sørensen and Van Eyck equally desired.
Ken Worpole is a writer on architecture, landscape and social policy. Ken has served on the UK government’s Urban Green Spaces Task Force, on the Expert Panel of the Heritage Lottery Fund, and was adviser to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). His publications include Here Comes the Sun: Architecture and Public Space in Twentieth Century European Culture (2001), Last Landscapes: The Architecture of the Cemetery in the West (2003), Contemporary Library Architecture: A Planning and Design Guide (2013) and The New English Landscape with photographer Jason Orton (2013).
