1Huizinga, 1972 (1938). His seminal essay on play was preceded by a presentation at the University of Leyden on the limits between ludic and ‘serious’ concerns in culture. Although sometimes criticized for its somewhat excessive scope, this text profoundly altered the perceptions about play and its cultural function to the extent that most subsequent serious writings on the subject made reference to it.
2Huizinga does not delve much in the distinction; if anything, his interest lies closer to the spirit of Paideia. He regarded modern sports as grossly overregulated. Caillois’ critique distinguished Ludus from Paideia (Caillois 1986 (1967)). Their perspectives also reflect upon the appraisals of the historian and the sociologist. Caillois who was associated with the surrealist movement and who befriended Bataille was also aware of such architectural developments, as the landscape architecture of Roberto Burle Marx.
No such distinction as play and game is acknowledged in French, Italian, or Spanish.
3Far from waning, the symbolic status of urban squares is made evident at times of uncertainty. This was confirmed in recent events in Tahir, Cairo, Gezi, Istanbul, or Plaza del Sol, Madrid, all massively seized for democratic expression between the years 2012 and 2013. One may reckon that these retain the significant function of representation of a people. These momentous political events captured worldwide attention.
4Unconcerned with good or bad, play exists beyond ethics, and yet ethical dimensions are often associated with it. Indeed, one reason for the late nineteenth-century upsurge of modern sport was its perceived usefulness for inculcating values allied to a team spirit, which was also instrumental to the training of managerial cadres. Confirming the vision of Huizinga (who esteemed modern sport as exceedingly regulated) and Caillois (who held it in more positive esteem), play supplied templates for social intercourse. Ortega asserted that it was play, before practical endeavours, that inaugurated social organization, the club representing a cradle of the political institution. And yet, play values are contingent on particular social mores, as shown for example in the exclusionary rules often attached to membership. Ominously the appeal of sport is prevalent in modern totalitarian agendas. Moreover, the often-restrictive access to playtime confirms Veblen’s indictment of the ‘leisured society’ privileges which was a direct consequence of its member’s abstinence from industrious (i.e. productive) occupations (Veblen 1994, 1989).
5For a detailed facsimile see: Romanelli 1982. The Ansart plan is available at www.archivovisual.cl/plano-de-Santiago–2 (accessed 15 August 2017).
6Like many of the original features, this radical encounter between building and sand was lost in subsequent refurbishments: today the Excelsior’s sea front is bedecked with an unimaginative front garden.
7Girouard (1975, 109) describes how Venetian rivalries were channelled through competitive games. For a more thorough description see Molmenti, 1905. The author lists regattas, bridge contests and field games (such as forze d’ Hercule and caccia dei tori): earth, water, and their mediating elements were somewhat recast in spectacular manner for ludic ends. Like Giacomo Franco, in the eighteenth century Gabriel Bella portrayed the celebrated carnival, and ludic activities such as bear baiting and bullfights performed in such unlikely settings as the Piazzetta, the Doge’s palace courtyard, and the Chiovere di san Giobbe. He also depicted bulls being chased over the Rialto in paintings now housed at the Querini Stampaglia. Simmel characterized Venice as a city of false appearances, a stage for theatrical performances (Simmel 2007 (1907)).
8Although many other foundations predated the Laws of the Indies, the principles enshrined in these were largely concordant.
9Recent scholarship validated this Vitruvian agenda. See: Welch (2007, 49). Although temporary seating facilities in the Forum often resulted in angular layouts, Roman amphitheatres eventually settled for the familiar oval configuration. Explains Welch: ‘a circular structure such as the Spanish corrida (sic) would have been an ideal space in terms of all the spectators getting a good view of the show. But egalitarian seating arrangements were not a Roman concern, nor would circular structures maximize the viewing space for gladiatorial spectacles within the forum. The ellipse fits well … and it supplies commanding spaces of the kind liked by the Romans’. Hemmed in between existing structures, the ellipse became an optimal compromise between the ideal and the possible.
The temporariness of these structures reflects a republican prohibition against spectators’ buildings in Rome. ‘The lack of a permanent amphitheatre in Rome until Augustus … is not connected with the kind of moral prohibitions that were applied to the theatre. Theatre spectacles were alleged to be enervating and corrupting, while the gladiatorial combat that took place in the forum was thought to harden people … and promote military discipline. No moral stigma was attached to gladiatorial entertainment. Impermanence is less the result of moral policing than of force of considerable habit … the situation is roughly comparable to the idea of football games being regularly held in (Washington DC) on the Mall’ (Welsh).
10An exception must be made for the famous Mayan ball courts, but these belonged to a culture where play, ritual and sacrifice liaised, quite in contrast with the modern agendas of sport. Colonial towns in Latin America sometimes also featured ball courts, but these were of northern Spanish (not indigenous) provenance.
11Sitte’s treatise became an important source for Le Corbusier. No so amongst Team Ten members who moved on to altogether different sets of referents. Sitte’s insistence upon the subject of the urban square is evident as it is his almost exclusively compositional approach.
12Alone in Team Ten, Candilis seems to have foreseen the menace and opportunities present in mass leisure, to the extent that much of his housing agenda was effectively channelled toward the making of resorts.
1Play ‘transforms structures into events’, observed Agamben, whereas ritual makes ‘events into structures’. If the sacred instinct united myth and rite, he argued, play either translated myth into words, or else rites into action, but never binding one to the other (Agamben, 2001).
2He makes special reference to the nunnery of Santa Catalina in Arequipa, southern Peru, an extraordinary monastic village. Why such a place should have counted as a ludic site was unexplained, but his vision of the ludic phenomena embraced atmosphere, irrational expense (as in the baroque conception of architecture), as well as the quality of otherness.
3No doubt non-British sports also acquired broad acceptance. All in all, it is true however that the main practices were disseminated by the British, with the worldwide dissemination of the lawn following that source.
4‘Thus, sport which began originally perhaps as a spontaneous reaction against the machine has become one of the mass duties of the machine age’, argued Mumford. Sport was for him just a compensatory function (Mumford 1934, 303–307).
5Artificial lighting was another feature at this stage, says Bale, with the effect of expanding play time into the night. Such was the case in many European scenarios, where the stadium was often conceived as monument.
6Huizinga drew parallels across scales: ‘the stadium, the table for games, the magic circle, the temple, the (theatre) scene … they are all in form and function playing grounds’ (Huizinga, 1994, 23, translated by the author). He did not delve into the formal or spatial subject however. Other authors link boards to fields, thus highlighting the commonality of their formal principles and the quality of abstraction that eased the passage through scales.
7(Ortega 1962). In his view the hunting ground differs from others such as the tourist’s, the farmer’s or the military, as all of them show signs of a significant recasting through human agency.
8Early photographers shared the excitement too, such as for example Edward Muybridge’s 1880s ‘explorations about the Human Figure in Motion’. See also Leni Riefenstahl’s 1936 Berlin series, Harold Egerton’s 1944 ‘Gussie Moran tennis performance’, and George Rodger’s 1949 ‘Korongo Nuba wrestlers’, amongst many others.
9The argument was about the beauty and precision attached to functional items: ‘there are certain categories of everyday objects that already possess most of the qualities of good design but which are not recognized as categories in which the question of design enters, because their qualities have been acquired self-consciously’ (Richards, 1935: 225, 226).
10See also, Le Corbusier, ‘L’art décoratif d’ajour’ hui’, 1925, for a description of sportive, lightweight functional items.
11Says Schama: forest replaced the older Latin terms saltus or sylva that signified a particular form of administration, independent from the Roman or common law. (Schama1995: 144). Landscape researcher Donadieu reaffirms the idea of the forest as a space apart, looking also into the various ways in which these have been conceived (Donadieu 2006: 66–77).
12Forests were often managed. See for example, Spirn (1998: 171–173). According to the author, the management strategies for Chantilly reveal a comprehensive control over the grounds over time which could be extended to similar cases.
13Older sources such as the radiating avenues in Rome are also acknowledged, but only the hunting forest construes veritable networks of allées as visualized by Haussmann for Paris.
14Cosgrove (1988) and Rykwert (2000, 26) concur in relating the upsurge of the aristocratic hunt to the episode of the enclosures and its momentous effect in the uses and prospects of the land.
15This extraordinary liturgy has been characterized as a barbarous ritual surrounded by extraordinary and fantastic taboos, and also as a highly structured and dramatic form of social communication.
16The subject was further elaborated through school assignments by Casanueva often submitting established sport practices to significant modifiers, such as the scale or weight of the elements or the nature of boundaries (Casanueva, 2009).
17The subject of the square was topical for Sitte, Stubben, Hegemann, later, Rasmussen, Korn, Zucker, Bacon, and others who traced its European lineages, sometimes stressing the central and northern contributions, sometimes the Mediterranean ones. The CIAM group addressed the subject as a main topic in its 8th congress entitled ‘The heart of the city’ (1951), but the ludic subject was seldom addressed.
18Like many playing fields in historic towns, this esplanade was originally devised for security: the case is similar to colonial Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. According to Mathur, the conception of these esplanades, such as the reclaimed Maidan in Calcutta that supplied a clear range of fire, followed defensive criteria. (Mathur, 1999; 212, 213).
19Ortega, quoted in Rowe and Koetter (1978; 50). A keen supporter of bullfights, Ortega drew parallels between the urbane sacrificial ritual and the hunt. He emphasized the contrasting southern and northern Spanish traditions. Barthes too was enthralled by bullfights observing how the bullfighter transformed a trail into a graceful act. (Barthes 2008).
20‘Tauromaquia o el arte de torear a caballo o a pie’. 1804 Obra escrita por el célebre profesor Josef Delgado (vulgo) Hillo, Madrid MDCCCIV, en la imprenta de Vega y Compañía, Calle de Capellanes. For a comprehensive survey of Spanish bullrings with a discussion about the evolution of the type see Diaz y Recasens 1992.
21Picasso signed the plans together with Matador Dominguin and Catalonian architect Bonet. On some occasions he proudly dressed up as a matador.
22For a full account see: Carduch Cervera Juan et al., ‘Architecture without plans, La Petatera’. polipapers. upv. es/index. php/EGA/article/view File/1038/1088 (accessed 15 August 2017).
23Scholarly attributions are contradictory however, for others have also been singled out as possible authors. The urban scene depicted in the Cassone painting ca. 1500, presently in The Walker Art Gallery Baltimore, features a commanding triumphal arch, a stadium to its left, and a baptistery-like building to its right, all framed by two nearly symmetrical palazzi in the foreground. The amphitheatre is both an anachronism, for no such structures were built in the Renaissance, and a classic revival.
24A noteworthy example is Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona’s 1968–70 brick clad Torres del Parque that overlook Bogota’s prime bullring, the same building that Le Corbusier had sketched in one of his visits to the city.
25Bear baiting and such activities, not to speak of the ancient Roman venatio where beasts were induced to kill each other, or else to confront fighters on a life to death struggle, that was staged for massive audiences. For a full account see: Dupavillon (2001).
26The amphitheatres in Nimes and Arles, southern France, present similar characteristics, except that only in Lucca did the former arena space become fully accessible to the public as it turned into a square. In Cartagena, Murcia, Spain, a bullring was mounted over the amphitheatre.
27Morrison (2011) stresses the authorship of John Wood the Elder. She also points to an emphasis upon layout, geometry and numerology, as concordant with Wood’s emphasis upon the decisive influence of early Britons in the foundation of the city. A slightly different version appears in Gravagnuolo (1998). See also Summerson (1963), who regarded Wood’s musings as mental digressions.
28Giedion was quite explicit about the reciprocity of domestic and leisure spaces: ‘the combination of movement and surprise and openness make [Bath’s Lansdowne Crescent] exactly what every residence should be: the adequate background for leisure’ (Giedion 1941). Bath was evoked to validate alternative urban models. Hilberseimer’s exemplified with its crescents the harmony between city and landscape (Hilberseimer, 1955; 188, 190). Smithson referred to the way the countryside came into the town as it did in eighteenth-century Rome. Clearly Bath represented for him a model for a sober, genteel and poetic urban establishment (Smithson, 1971).
29For a contrast between templates, and the notion of the identical, see Carpo (2011). Although he does not discuss the ludic field, he enquires into the mechanisms and conceptual effects of identical reproducibility in architecture.
30It became a significant cluster of sport facilities in Rome.
31So they were described by Auciello who relates field to board games. Table Tennis played a momentous role in the thawing of the Sino-American conflict that brewed over the Cold War. A contest between Chinese and North American champions became a prelude to negotiation between the belligerent parties. Ludic Agon released political tensions.
1Casanueva (2009). What made his experience original was not only the inventiveness lavished on each game but also its inscription within the framework of the Valparaiso school curricula. The institution showed particular proclivities towards the idea of play and chance. See (Rispa et al., 2003), also (Pérez de Arce 2003; 18–31).
2The 2014 Tour de France is reported to have covered an overall circuit of 3,664 kilometres of flat, hilly, and mountainous terrain. Lacking in material or formal mediation, the Tour turns ‘ordinary spaces’ into ludic grounds.
3For a discussion about the idea of the large park see Czerniak and Hargreaves (2007), a thoroughly documented enquiry, although biased toward Europe and North America (no mention is made of remarkable cases such as Sao Paulo Ibirapuera, Rio, Aterro de Flamengo, Buenos Aires Palermo or Caracas Parque del Este). An account of the transformation of the Bois de Boulogne from hunting ground into public park is offered in the same volume (Hargreaves 2007: 132, 139).
4Largely ignored in landscape circles, these were highlighted in the MOMA review on modern engineering. Drexler, 1964. The exhibit featured the 1962 Olympic ski jump stadium in Innsbruck by engineers Peyerl and Heinz and architect Klopfer. Drexler classed it as Earthworks but its effect upon the mountain profile relates better to the celebrated 1962 solar observatory tower by SOM in Arizona that was featured in the same exhibit.
5Palin as it was known to its original practitioners, the Araucanians (from southern Chile and Argentina) the game was eventually classed a National Sport in a process of institutional control that accords with Elias’ thesis about the transformation of pastimes into sport.
6As arranged for Federer and Nadal’s so called ‘battle of surfaces’ which was played over a half clay half grass court in Palma de Mallorca in 1997.
7Basque ball or jai alai is another rare case of the action following a lateral axis roughly in parallel to the audience.
8(Schama,1995). Also, (Scully, 1991; 275, 289), drew attention to the nexus between French baroque landscapes and the military arts of fortifications, one that became evident in the collaboration of Vauban and Le Notre in Chantilly. The construing of visual fields through geometric alignments, and the shaping of the land on a grand scale through recourse to geometry were shared. As aforementioned, another nexus of sport and military requirements was present in certain Maidans.
1Although it is not as common to highlight the function of materials in the urban discourse as it is in landscape, the issue seems to be increasingly redressed. See for example Teyssot et al. 1999 and Zardini et al. 2005; where the lawn, asphalt and snow are discussed as fundamental ingredients to the urban experience. The notion of landscape urbanism conflates ‘urban’ and ‘landscape’ appraisals with a bias toward the organic, fluid and changeable aspects.
2‘The Brutalist Playground’, (RIBA, 2015) curated by the collective Assemble and the artist Simon Terrill, registered noteworthy British playgrounds built in abrasive materials.
3As conveyed by Monet in his own garden in Giverny. Also, of course in Tanisaky’s (1977) eulogy of shadow, light, colour nuance, and dense water bodies.
4Church’s manual betrayed an idea of domestic leisure in contrast with the collective ideals we have examined. ‘Which will survive, the children or the garden?’ he asked, favouring in his words a collaboration between the garden and the playground’ (Church, 1955; 19).
5Garnier labelled the complex ‘grande piscine hydrothérapie’, showing a health bias. It comprised a monumental public bath, hot and cold baths, a fencing room and training track, all next to field games for tennis, soccer and cycling. Turn of the century Sutro Baths in San Francisco was another extraordinary case of a monumental (albeit light built) ensemble with an amphitheatre with a seating capacity of 3,700 and a holding capacity of 25,000 (P.G.&E Magazine September 1912). Typical of these establishments was their formal distinction between onlookers and swimmers, as in stadiums. Atelier Nikolski’s scheme was echoed by Alvaro Siza’s 1979 Gorlitzer Bad in Berlin Kreuzberg, thus re-editing the notion of a monumental bathing space. Kahn drew inspiration from the monumental Roman Baths for his lofty bathing establishments.
6As defined by the British amateur diving association (1903). Smith (2005).
7There were numerous cases in the UK, such as for example, Blackpool 1923, Southport 1928, Finchley 1931, Hastings 1933, as portrayed in Smith (2005). Italian cases such as Castel Fusano or Venice’s Lido feature the kinds of miniaturized citadels largely made of beach cabins which Rossi found so enthralling.
1A rule which he broke in the 1932 Obus Plan Algiers, where the lie of the land rather than solar orientation became the guiding criterion.
2The rule does not apply to all modern experiences that embrace multiple traditions, but orthodox views gained ascendancy particularly in housing, as witnessed by countless schemes worldwide.
3As in Diller and Scofidio’s 2002 Blur, media pavilion, at the Swiss expo in Neuchâtel.
4Labyrinthine (sic) clarity was published in 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, each time with slight changes.
5Hall, 1985. Aside from the 1931 Downtown athletic club, he listed the 1928 New York Christidora House, the 1916 Missouri Athletic Club, the 1928 Penn Athletic Club, all of them ‘fabric hybrids’ (i.e. such high-rise structures ‘characterized by the … subsequent relegation of programme to an inconspicuous status in the appearance of the building’) the Downtown Athletic Club belonged instead to the ‘graft hybrids’ with an outward expression of programme. With a combined programme of offices, commerce, and athletic facilities, New York’s 1976 United Nations Plaza belonged to the category of ‘monolith hybrids’ with a greater emphasis on a singular expression. Koolhaas’ review of the athletic club was made in 1994.
6‘Made in Tokyo’ lists such urban adaptations as swimming or diving pools, fairgrounds and golf practice ranges fitted atop structures for other uses in a city with little green space for expansive sports (Kuroda et al. 2006).
7See Neil Levine, A utopian space between tourism and development, Frank Lloyd Wright architectures for the deserts of the American Southwest, in: Picon Lefevre and Chaouni, et al. (2011).
8See for example the Italian BBPR team’s ‘labyrinth’, a spiralling trefoil wall structure for the X Milano triennial that featured a mural by Steinberg, and a mobile by Calder.
9Ski Dubai, the 2005 capsular, fully acclimatized 400-metre-run ski range was construed as if a field fitted within the fuselage of an airship. For inflatables see McLean and Peter, 2015. In Graham Stevens’ 1970s Atmosfields, St Katherine’s Dock, London, the minute figure of the artist holds a huge inflated beam. In Stevens’ Transmobile, human engagement was activated through the manipulation of the inflatable structure from within.
10Ortner (1957), Mandoul (2014). Following the linear structure of a dictionary, Mandoul’s remarkable survey looks at the fabric of the city of Paris through its sport places. It features significant examples of sport mosaics.
11Casanueva (2009: 139, 145) portrayed eighteen such inventions. ‘Despelote’ (a pun on pelota (ball) meaning chaos) was based in the manipulation of just one element in such traditional games as tennis, badminton, or volleyball, namely the net, which he radically increased in height. The tempo was regulated by drums; motions followed sound, stillness followed silence. The formal care and the music accompanying the action accorded with the ancestral festive ethos of the ludic activity.
12Established on reclaimed land, the Parque Brigadeiro Eduardo Gomez, otherwise known as Aterro do Flamengo, was initiated in 1951 and completed in 1961 (Soares et al. 2003: 143 144); (Bonduki (ed.) 2000).
13Photographers like Joachim Schmid (with the Brazilian series ‘o Campo’) and Leonardo Finotti (with the Paulista series ‘Pelada’) portrayed this remarkable phenomenon.
14It touches upon an issue of a more general character as it is the fitness of site to composition, and in broader terms the issue of the commonplace as a source of architectural consideration. Serlio has often been credited as the first treatise author to include explicit reference about fitting a residential ensemble within an inadequate site.
15The issue was explored at various seminars conducted by the author at Cornell, GSD and Santiago.
16In the documentary film A Valparaiso released by Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens in 1963 the pulse of the city is portrayed mainly through play.
1In amusement parks and fairgrounds, mechanics substitute the organic materials usually associated with parks (Braithwaite 1968). Sica likens the process to a picturesque estrangement of the signs of industrial civilization (Sica 1981: 905). In the course of the century certain leisure compounds such as Las Vegas evolved towards the creation of immersive environments of greater effect than the average fairground. The incisive analysis of Venturi and Isenour becomes now (much like Koolhaas’ narrative about Coney Island) a sort of archaeological description about a no longer existing scenario.
2See for example the dramatic role assigned to the Viennese ferris wheel in Carol Reed’s 1949 film, ‘The Third Man’. Carnival is often made into a setting for drama as in Marcel Camus’ magical portrayal of Rio in ‘Black Orpheus’ (1959).
1The emphasis on play allows us to differentiate significant initiatives such as for example the 1930s Italian children colonies with their emphasis upon fascist indoctrination, from others led by recreation. The tension between play and indoctrination, its inherent freedom and its instrumental manipulation is examined in the following sections. See Wall and De Martino 1988.
2GATCPAC: group of Catalonian architects and technicians for the progress of contemporary architecture (Grup d’Arquitectes i Tècnics Catalans per al Progrés de l’Arquitectura Contemporània). The city of leisure may be contrasted with the contemporary Italian Calambrone with its massive children colonies (mostly built between 1933 and 1935) and neighbouring Tirrenia, a planned headquarters for the film industry over the seaside. See Wall and De Martino 1988.
3Ivan Leonidov, quoted by S. Kahn-Magomedov in: Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies 8 Ivan Leonidov (1981), Rizzoli, New York. 20, 56–59. In a twist of fate, such ideas about combining leisure and work in the office environment became fashionable as the concept of ‘wellness’ gained acceptance in the advanced corporate environments of late capitalism.
4Aries (1960). Childhood, we are reminded by Aries, is above all a social construct and as such, contingent on cultural views and sensibilities. Aries explains how a concept of a very brief childhood was long lasting and how age groups in our societies are organized around institutions, the modern concept of childhood being related to the modern concept of schooling.
5The Architectural Graphic Standards was first published in 1964. Its 1988 eighth edition featured forty pages about sport.
6Berger argues that, as from the nineteenth century, the upper classes evolved certain patterns of male fashion such as ironed trousers and jackets that made more apparent their sedentary work and their abstinence from strenuous physical effort. ‘The suit as we know it today … is the first ruling class costume to idealize pure sedentary power.’ The ‘sport style’ instead allowed for vigorous motion (it also gets soiled in action) (Berger 2013: 35, 42).
7Bale (2001) makes reference to the way in which as a format, the saucer type stadium reduces the landscape elements that belonged to the incrementally built English stadium. The process reached a literal closure with the inward looking all-enclosed sky-dome type.
8He seems to have grasped the unprecedented qualities arising from a modern sport ensemble. Olympic Architecture, Barclay F. Gordon, John Wiley and Sons, London.
9Jellicoe generously quotes Rasmussen.
10Miller (2004). See also Hersey, ‘The colosseum the geometry and the spectaculum’, Chora 4, Mc Gill (103 –126). The Latin Spectaculum is the alternative denomination in mass spectacle to the Anglo-Saxon auditorium.
11This idea of provisional housing as propaedeutic for modern living habits was tested in Rotterdam’s 1923, 24 ‘white village’ where the poor and disenfranchised learned how to manoeuvre in the unprecedented habitat of pristine blocks with their angular precincts bathed in sunlight and equipped with modern utilities, before reaching their new apartments. Unprecedented ludic habits were also nurtured in these modern scenarios.
12As in the aforementioned urban scene attributed to Luciano de Laurana. The stadium rubs shoulders with assorted institutions in a spirit akin to Kahn’s idea about bringing the stadium to the core of Philadelphia and Dacca.
13For a description of the scheme’s political and cultural framework see Mohajery, Sima (2013) ‘Louis I Kahn Silent space of critique in Teheran’. San Rocco 6, Collaborations.
1The point was clearly stated by Giedion who introduced Aldo Van Eyck’s Amsterdam playgrounds in his debate about the city core.
2In this highly suggestive essay Allen indistinctly looks at children as captive performers (as in Terragni’s orphan asylum in Como for example) and other cases where the presence of children derives from the photographer’s explicit choice. In contrast with the images of children at free play see the period photographs about children submitted to collective discipline in Wall and De Martino (1988).
3‘As Found’ draws from a certain value of the real above the imaginary, of ordinariness and imperfection also of chance. See, for example, the visually saturated Paolozzi’s scrapbooks where heterogeneous images collaged together trigger unexpected chance readings. (Lichtenstein et al 1993).
4‘For Team X bears the weight of what is supposed to be the apostolic succession; and though it often endeavours to compensate for this elevated predicament with insubstantial graphics and verbal infantilism … one senses in their invariably cautious performance the consciousness of almost ecclesiastical responsibility’ (Rowe 1978: 41).
5The point was further emphasized by Rykwert, Vidler and others.
6J C Friedrich von Schiller, ‘Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man’, Literary and Philosophical Essays. The Harvard Classics 1909–14, Letter XV.
7As becomes evident in Van Eesteren’s 1928 lecture, he emphasized the function of sport in leisure to the detriment of play in general. An isolated football pitch served him as an illustration of ‘an element of the modern city plan that must be completely understood if it is to be correctly placed’, quoted by Van Rossen (Van Eesteren 1997: 29). See also recreation (pp. 39–50).
8Voelcker, (1955: 94). ‘Through a playground and similar simple urban function existing urban associations – hitherto isolated streets for example – may be extended … observing its use the urbanist will be guided … to future, more extensive socially more complex tasks … this is research…’.
9Lefaivre recalls how Van Eesteren ‘who had made no provision for playgrounds in his extension plan for Amsterdam’, changed his approach, largely influenced by Van Eyck’s, not just as regards play types, but also as regards the primacy of a site-specific urban appraisal that capitalized on local nuance (Lefaivre 2002: 24, 49).
10The point was raised by Peter Smithson in his 1970 BBC2 film on housing and recalled by Alan Powers in Robin Hood Gardens: a critical narrative pp. 239–240 (Risselada, 2011).
11Krauss, Karl, 1913.Nachts. In Die Fackel. Jg 15, Heft 37 as quoted in Nassir Zarrin Panah pp1 www.cloud-cuckoo.net/
12Breuer designed the 1963–1964 Fairview Heights housing scheme in partnership with Hamilton Smith. Perry’s ‘neighbourhood unit’ was based upon an idea of relationships between family life and social equipment arranged in blocks with arterial roads circumscribing residential quarters and their ludic and educational equipment situated within green cores away from traffic.
13Drummond Abertheney, head of the children play department at the NPFA, Britain, quoted in Norman (2003: 19).
14In Jour de Fête (1949) and Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953) Jacques Tati also addressed play and recreation.
15Frei Otto et al. (1979). In this colloquium on adaptable architecture, Yona Friedman, Konrad Wachsman, Gunter Nitschke and others embraced vernacular form, pilgrimage sites, funfairs, emergency dwellings, and play. Mietke’s ‘building construction as play’ (230, 233) drew parallels with ‘primitive’ practices, noting the subject’s relevance as regards elementary technologies, appropriateness of building to material, self-build strategies, and the social dimension of building.
16Lego, the Danish invention, followed, with its open-ended interlocking plastic modules.
17For Rossi the amphitheatre was a remarkable case of formal persistence and functional adaptability as enshrined in Rome, Florence, Nimes and Arles. Except for Rome’s, once considered to be made into a wool factory (1590) and later to include a memorial church (Carlo Fontana 1707), the others became citadels and were later cleared of invasive structures. Arles is an occasional venue for bullfights. Lucca is particularly apposite to our subject for it had its arena turned into a square.
18Others shared this fascination: see for example Summerson (1963: 1–3). Cosiness and ceremony are two aspects Summerson relates to play, the former present in the child’s domain, the latter in ‘serious’ adult play ‘which is intertwined with religious and social custom’.
19Vitruvius’ remarks were slightly different (as quoted by Sitte on page 6): he was referring to the arrangements around the public space made to facilitate the enjoyment of gladiatorial contests performed in the forum.
20An exception should be made of Noguchi’s play mantra, a monolithic slide that conforms to the object-like quality of Nielsen’s play sculptures.
21See for example: Architecture d’ Aujourd’hui, L’Architecture et l’Enfance (February-March 1971) where hollowed sculptures by Enzo Mari (En toute liberté) and Juliette de Jekel were featured. Other pieces featured, by Mitsuru Senda and Group Ludic could also rate as ‘sculptural’.
22See for example: Van Leeuwen (1998). The author traces a broad description of the Californian swimming pool culture. He also quotes Rasmussen in relation to the Minoletti swimming pool. The Sonoma pool is extensively reviewed in Church (1955: 231, 235).
23See for example Thomas Church and Dianne Harris, ‘Making your private world: modern landscape architecture and House Beautiful’, 1945 (1965). In Treib (2002).
24Carsten Holler monumentalized the former in his stainless-steel Test Site, for the Tate Modern Turbine Hall (2007), subverting the museum’s vertical linkages by way of a swift connection between top and ground. With it, this archetypal apparatus made an entry into the art institution. Holler also thought of using slides as high rise escape routes. See Tate Trustees (2006: 38,53). Roy Kolzlovsky traces the technological origins of slides to such sources as indigenous Canadians (as betrayed by the word toboggan), Russian ice slides (precursor of the Russian mountain and the roller coaster). The amusement park was in his view the medium where this leisure apparatus thrived.
25Political agendas were no doubt also involved as several authors claim, playgrounds contributing to appease the always volatile instincts of the working class, in the eyes of the ruling class.
26Another source of interest is Niemeyer’s use of the under croft of the tribunes as school classrooms, endowing the structure with everyday usages. Seen this way, the operation was similar to the underside of Kahn’s stadium seat ranks accommodating secondary uses in Philadelphia.
1According to Norbert Elias, the English Public School with its ethical emphasis on fair play and collaborative efforts, and the Nordic Gymnasium with its emphasis upon discipline and endurance equally appealed to Greek precedent. Other authors point to the neoclassical overtones of such a relationship.
2See for example the cases of Soldiers Field Harvard and Briggs Field MIT with their associated gymnasia and facilities: lavish grounds that compare to the scale of the oriental Maidan.
3Campo is also Spanish for countryside.
4Not just in ‘Towards a new architecture’, but foremost in his excursion into the USA as described in ‘When the cathedrals were white’, Mc Graw Hill Paperbacks 1964.
5As regards the entanglement of organized play and political matters, said Fergusson (2003, 260–263) ‘the British empire of the 1890s resembled nothing more than an enormous sports complex … hunting continued to be the favourite … of the upper classes, (but) it was team games however that did most to make a reality of the ideal of Great Britain … Baden Powell … boy scout movement … another highly successful recreational export which aimed to generalize the team spirit of the games field into an entire way of life’.
6Barnard illustrated three models: a ‘Roman Revival School House’ immersed in extensive pastoral grounds, an ‘Urban grammar school house’, with a planted front yard, and separate playgrounds for boys and girls, framed by a shaded grove, and an ‘Infant school’ with a single yard that contained a few trees.
7One may recall the significance of the Kinder Garten, a garden for infants in the conception of the differentiated outdoor scenarios.
8Alfred Roth decried those traditional monumental schools, pointing to their lack of scale, functional indifference and absence of creativity. Roth pledged that the modern school had to embrace pedagogic and psychological considerations together with environmental, technical and functional principles (Roth 1958).
9Not at least in their discourse, as it was in le Corbusier’s. (He devoted just one spread to ‘the space of gymnastics and sports’.)
10Cases abound: Roth (1948) dedicated ample space to the Suresnes school. He also featured the Amsterdam Open Air school (1948, 207–210).
11Maekawa was a former Corbusier assistant. The scheme is portrayed in Treib (2002, 272).
12Hertzberger advanced many of these points in conferences and magazine articles compiled in his previous book Lessons in Architecture, 1981.
13Rudofsky (1969, 327–336). Conversant with Jane Jacobs’s arguments about street life, and coinciding with her critique about the North American planning malaise, Rudofsky also thought of vandalism as a form of negative play.
14Several Authors, 2005, La Bauhaus de Festa 1919–1933. Fundación La Caixa, Barcelona. The intense ludic calendar followed by the Bauhaus is displayed as much as the tensions built between the carnivalesque activities and the sportive ones.
15How far the scheme was instrumental to the ideological agendas of apartheid is another matter.
16The prize was awarded to Chamberlain Powell and Bon.
17For a more detailed account see: Naval Academy in: Rispa (Ed) 2003, 28–31.
1There was an element of indictment but also wonder about it, as an expression of the huge territorial incidence of tourism and leisure. Asked Smithson about Cité Lacustre, Port Grimaud, the fake Provençal village-cum-resort: ‘why are we so disturbed about Port Grimaud?’ As in Disneyworld, the urban mess that was common to large conglomerates was left outside (Smithson, 1973).
2Guy Debord quoted by Simon Sadler (1998, 91).
3Sadler (2000). As pointed out, the ideology of Non-Plan matched the extensive deregulation applied later by Thatcher and Reagan.
4Ward (1979) and (1988), See his essay ‘Anarchy and architecture, a personal record’ in Sadler (2000).
5Friedman attended the CIAM X congress in Dubrovnik where he became disenchanted with the propositions of the younger generation.
6Reckoning a common ground with Friedman, Rudofsky portrayed the Ville Spatiale as a visionary projection of the vernacular tradition (Rudofsky 1969: 197). Walks up in the air did indeed awake ludic reactions, as would have been the case with Constant’s three-dimensional urban matrix too.
7As recollected by various authors, the relations woven within the International Situationists (1957, 1972) were short lived and riddled with disputes. Just for a while Constant and Debord shared each other’s insightful ideas. Debord is credited with the invention of the Dérivé.
8He did in fact publish some of Constant’s writings. See Sadler (2000).
9The point is made by Thomas y Levin, in Andreotti (1996: 136–138), who note how these criteria were summed up in the International Situationists first issue.
10It is interesting to compare John Hedjuk’s competition entry to Alvaro Siza’s, who covered a large portion of the site with a shallow dish with a replica of Adolph Loos’s Herald Tribune column-tower arising from its centre. It would be fascinating to imagine the possible ludic occupations of such an austere memorial.
1Similar patterns can be examined in the new town of La Plata in Argentina, south of Buenos Aires, originated by public competition in 1881, also in the aforementioned 1974 Ansart plan of Santiago de Chile.
2Mumford (1966: 563): ‘In breaking away from the city, the part became a substitute for the whole, even as a single phase of life, … childhood, became the pattern for the seven ages of man … As leisure generally increased, play becomes the serious business of life, and the golf course, the country club, the swimming pool and the cocktail party become the frivolous counterfeits of a more varied and significant life. Compulsive play fast becomes the acceptable alternative to compulsive work’. In metropolis and suburb, Mumford observed, ‘mass production, mass consumption, mass recreation produce the same kind of denatured environment’. Implicitly endorsing Caillois’s conception about play as an index of social trends, he identified them with ‘playful emptiness’.