Playgrounds are spaces with equipment dedicated to children's leisure, where they can develop motor and social skills. However, these spaces are new to our cultures and cities and emerge from the recognition of childhood as a fundamental stage of human development.
Society did not respect childhood until the middle of the 19th century. Children represented a large quorum of workers during the industrial revolution. We learned the importance of protecting children from the revolutionary ideas of the Left wing, which guided workers' movements at the turn of the century and fought for better living and working conditions.
The understanding of pedagogy, closely related to psychology, as a science, and the return of physical education as a subject of social interest - abandoned at the end of the Roman Empire - stand out among many advances in the human sciences that took place in this period. At the same time, intense urban transformations resulting from population growth resulted in the emergence of slums and peripheries, bringing new demands to the built environment. Children's playgrounds arise and develop in this context, which unites emancipatory ideals, pedagogy and urban needs.
It was from the ideas of Friedrich Fröbel, a German pedagogue active until the mid-1850s, that the kindergarten emerged. In his theory, Fröbel valued free and spontaneous development through games, toys and an environment where children could be in contact with nature and the earth, recognizing that we humans are creative beings. His theory advocated mixed-gender learning, challenging the churches and class conflicts of the time. At the same time that Fröebel created a line of educational toys that would later impact modern architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and the Bauhaus, his prototype kindergarten is considered the herald of today's playgrounds.
The idea of kindergarten spread across Europe and reached the United States at the end of the 19th century, representing yet another variable in urban issues. A progressive movement of educators, child psychologists and social workers began to guide local governments to create spaces in cities where children and young people could have their leisure time in a supervised and controlled way. The first playground on record dates back to 1892, on the premises of Hull House, a settlement house for the Settlement House Movement in Chicago, a reformist social movement that fought to remedy social inequality caused by immigration and the industrialization process.
While Hull House was a pioneer in creating a playground and opening it to the public, progressive groups across the country were pushing for social reform derived from leisure facilities and assistance to the underprivileged sections of the population. That pressured governments to understand recreational needs as a daily and local demand, not occasional and distant. Therefore, in the first decades of the 20th century, public parks intended to integrate popular and immigrant classes into a space for meeting and sociability, or Reform Parks, were created. They had sports courts and playgrounds with a layout similar to today's, with slides, swings, seesaws and sandboxes.
The idea of public space as a tool for social reform has lost strength over time. However, the importance of these spaces as social places has increased. In addition, recreation has increasingly become a government responsibility. Playgrounds became part of neighborhood design in urban centers in different parts of the world, starting in Europe and the United States. With childhood and child safety on the agenda, different playground layouts, and their risks, began to be explored.
Aldo Van Eyck built his first playground in 1947 on an abandoned plot of land in Amsterdam, a city partially destroyed in World War II. He proposed an architecture that could promote social interaction and adapt to children's creativity, rescuing one of the most revolutionary principles of this space, lost within its functionality. With generic elements and minimal intervention in the area, the purpose of Van Eyck's playground was to stimulate creativity and enable children to appropriate the built space in constant relationship with the urban environment.
From the second half of the 20th century onwards, numerous proposals for children's playgrounds related to the many other contemporary pedagogies came out. Currently, they are diverse and seek to be inclusive. With multi-functional and multi-sensorial spaces, using natural elements, such as water and greenery, and contrasting varied materials, playgrounds stimulate children. With the growth of the debate on how to integrate children into the urban environment, playgrounds have been gaining prominence in the design of cities, creating new links, such as the visual arts and their urban interventions that propose dialogue with children.
Throughout history, playgrounds have conquered their place on the urban fabric and are recognized as leisure and cultural facilities for children and the surrounding communities. Its functionality varies depending on the location and may be related to other recreational and cultural elements. Its form also presents wide diversity. Above their physical aspects, playgrounds are recognized as important places of socialization in neighborhoods and mark the importance of children as active living beings in the cities.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on October 27, 2022.
