Brassil Playground

The question we were required to address was: How do we experience the idea of 'place' as designers. I worked in a group with Tanya Agarwal and Candy Wang and we selected Brassil Playground as our site. The project began with historical and informational research as well as observational data that represented the playground through formal elements.

Using this collection of data, we designed two posters— one informational, the other poetic. The former is a motion poster designed in two parts. The exploded view of the playground gives a formal break down of its visual elements. The animated lines moving across the diagram represent the movement of the children playing on the jungle gym.

The poetic poster is a collection of the formal elements and shapes that we gathered from the playground. We stylized the existing forms and using those recreated our own playground based on color and visual context. We then integrated the conversation that we overheard, as text within our digital playground.

 

The final installation was a piece taken from the playground and brought to a gallery context for people to view. The question we wanted answered was “why as adults we don’t play anymore”. We placed a collection of playful objects— a hula hoop, jump rope and a pogo stick— to see how people reacted to this environment. 

Using formal elements, we also created wall and floor graphics that imitated the playground. The aim was to allow people to think about “play” in this untraditional playground constructed by three designers. We were not entirely surprised when even the professors were unable to resist the urge to jump rope, or try their hand at the hula hoop.

Additionally, we designed a book of 60 poetic posters that correlated to every minute of an hour that we spent observing the playground.