Posted by Kerala Taylor on December 5, 2012
If you thought knitting a sweater required patience, try knitting a playground. That’s right—Japanese artist Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam (pictured right) challenges our understanding of what a playground can look like by creating breathtaking, interactive “sculptures” from colorful nylon ropes.
ArchDaily editor Vanessa Quirk recently sat down with Horiuchi MacAdam to learn more about her work. (You can read the full interview here.) When asked what motivated her to start creating playspaces for children, Horiuchi MacAdam says:
“One day I was exhibiting a 3-dimensional open-work textile sculpture I had created in collaboration with a friend. Some children came to the gallery and climbed into it. Suddenly the piece came to life. My eyes were opened. I realized I wanted just such a connection between my work and people alive at this moment in time (not a hundred years from now). I realized I was in fact making works for children. It was an exciting moment for me.
“I was teaching at the Bunka Institute in Tokyo at the time and with 2 of my students I began to look carefully at the situation for children, in particular regard to play. We spent the next three years, mostly weekends, visiting all the parks and playgrounds in central Tokyo.
“The result of our research was depressing. At the time the country was narrowly focused on economic development; few were considering the effects on children of growing up in cramped, high-rise apartments, watching television, often an only child without brothers or sisters to interact with. I was very worried about this. I felt I needed to do something to bring even a little change.
Top photos and bottom left photo: Wonder Space II, by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam and Interplay, at Hakone Open Air Museum. Bottom right photo: Rainbow Nest, by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam and Interplay, at Takino Suzuran Hillside National Park, Hokkaido, Japan. All photos © Masaki Koizumi.
“The crochet forms I make resemble the mother’s womb. The soft, elastic surface is familiar to the child. The net membrane is sensitive to the child’s slightest movement capturing his energy and transmitting it back to him. The wave-like motion of the net connects him with other children and they start playing together. Their creative minds start to move and they find new ways of playing. They respond to each other. It is sometimes hard to entice children out of the net; they can sometimes be lost in it for 3-4 hours.
“Our structures encourage children to challenge themselves but with many routes and options. There is no program of play. There are always alternatives. Each child plays at the level he or she is comfortable with. From forty years’ experience I have learned a little about children’s psychology.
“Some groups of children come regularly to play on their own; their play is fantastic. They know what they are capable of and then stretch just a little further, becoming more and more adept. Some of their maneuvers are heart-stopping to a bystander – but they know what they are doing.
“Often it is parents who are the problem. They seem to have forgotten what it was like to be a child.”
Special thanks to ArchDaily for sharing this excerpt. Read the full interview here.
