The Brutalist Playground

John Hill

10. juni 2015

The Brutalist Playground at RIBA (Photo: Courtesy of Assemble)

Artist Simon Terrill and architectural collective Assemble have teamed up to create full-scale "soft" versions of postwar British playgrounds inside the Architecture Gallery at RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) in London.

In a 3-1/2-minute video from the RIBA, Terrill and members of the Turner Prize-nominated Assemble discuss the appeal of the concrete playspaces that were built as part of the postwar housing estates and their motives behind the exhibition, much of it related to risk and changing attitudes toward it over time.

The Brutlist Playground is on display at RIBA's Architecture Gallery from 10 June to 16 August 2015. See other highlights taking place this month as part of the London Festival of Architecture in our recent short guide to the LFA.

Churchill Gardens estate in Pimlico, London (Photo: John Donat/RIBA Library Photographs Collection)

Elsewhere in London, artist Carsten Höller has turned the Brutalist Southbank Centre into a playground of sorts by tacking his trademark slides onto the side of the building. It is part of the exhibition Carsten Höller: Decision that runs at the Hayward Gallery from 10 June to 6 September 2015.