Student Work
1∕6
Title
Play+Ground
Project Description
Play+Ground is an investigation into the increasingly necessary role of public space in Athens—conceived of as a monumental form in the city, rather than as a sequence of interstitial interventions. The paradox of Athens is that it is a city whose identity is so closely linked to the value our touristically minded society prescribes to monument. However, because of its chaotic urban structure, it undermines the connections between them, creating a visually dramatic separation between the city and its legacy. A city of global heritage nested within an insular privatized and undeniably local mat. Athens is a trapped city, in a way held hostage by its own history, either totally global or totally privatized while somehow lacking the essential in between space needed for the stimulation of the resident. The Play+Ground claims that a non-antagonistic commons would alleviate the city’s social constipation, a commons not driven by consumerism or capital gain, by tourism nor global participation, but by the very citizens, students and neighbors of the city. For someone like Johan Huizinga, ‘Play’ is a primary condition of the generation of culture. Architecturalized, this may manifest similarly to Van Eyck’s Amsterdam playgrounds, as an approach to the reclamation of disfigured urban space. Instead of discrete intervention, however, could the process of urban play generate a new type of monumentality? A monumentality that is designed to be redefined with the use and participation of the visitor—to be understood and conversely, misunderstood. Like the Monolith [2001 Space Odyssey], this project asks: Can a built architecture can be explicitly as much about form as it is about curiosity?