Ground-up City Play as a Design Tool

With "Ground-Up City," author Liane Lefaivre has developed a theoretical model for tackling playgrounds as an urban strategy. She starts with a historical overview of play and the ludic in art, architecture and urban design, focusing particularly on postwar playgrounds realized in Amsterdam as joint ventures between Aldo van Eyck, Cornelis van Eesteren and Jakoba Mulder. The architecture firm Döll-Atelier voor Bouwkunst explored the possibility of applying the model in two urban redevelopment areas in Rotterdam, Oude Westen in the inner city and Meeuwenplaat in Hoogvliet, an outlying postwar district, refining it into a practical design strategy. The second part of the book provides a refreshing new look at play in a picture essay, with reference images illustrating play as an urban phenomenon. "Ground-Up City" places the playground high on the agenda as an urban design challenge. It also shows how specifying a generic, academic model for a particular situation can lead to a practically applicable design resource.