Grounds of Play

Abstract

Playgrounds are the fundamental public spaces in which social development, movement skills and team spirit of the youth are enhanced. Athens’ playgrounds are repetitive and standardized, in their majority in a degraded condition. They reflect the utter lack of imaginative perception in design and a random implementation process.

Based upon the recording and assessment of existing playgrounds in Athens, the PXATHENS project formulates a strategy for the redesign and reconstruction of six spaces. The envisioned spaces for play offer the ‘in-situ’ joy of social coexistence, confirmation of physical skills, observation and exploration, while their interconnection defines a network for play open to all. The project, an initiative of the non-profit organisation ‘‘Paradeigmatos Harin’’ in collaboration with the Municipality of Athens, implemented two spaces as a pilot project.

Six properties and their thresholds, the Six Thresholds, attributed rhythm and character to the space which stretches on a pedestrian street on the Acropolis foothills. Children are granted the unlimited possibility to integrate the open, undulating, flowing space in their games in a condition of perpetual re-articulation of their own realities.

In Three Corners, every corner is a crossroad of culture, communication and conciliation. The intervention aims at reinstating a crossroad through three converging territories - ‘corners’ for play.