PHILLY PLAYSCAPE POTENTIALS : Progress- a toolkit of known and unknown parts

What are the play spaces in our cities? - Streets, plazas, parks, lawns, terraces, rooftops, campuses, empty lots, bars, clubs, porches ??

Why didn’t we see anyone playing on North American Street?

Does play need to take place in a pocket of safety?

Somewhere where one is are comfortable, at ease?

PART 1: THE IDEA

A MANIFESTO:

Create a playscape environment that is specific to a place and speaks to the needs of the area, something that responds to the needs of the people. Let play mean something in plush suburban neighborhoods, and something other in the compact busy inner city, something entirely new in degrading urban pockets such as North American Street.

This playscape will manifest itself as a space that is known, secure- a place to be at ease.

This will be no sterile zone however.

Play is as much about the unknown as it is about the unknown.

Built on the germinal framework of the known, familiar, or ‘at-ease’ elements, A grid of the unknown is built upwards, rising into the sky.

Players can rise and fall into this grid, touching summits as they walk, climb, and search.

A mesh of summits will allow people to navigate from the known to the unknown.

FOR THE CITY...

Develop a system of existing elements or points-summits, that can become springing boards for new attachments and play pockets that can appear where they are needed - places of ease, and places of the unknown. Places of play.

This tool kits are to be specific to particular neighborhoods and urban conditions, as will the resulting play spaces.

PART 2: COMPARATIVE SITES

GEOGRAPHICAL EXTENTS:

Summit-space will respond to 2 or three diverse conditions in Philadelphia, to understand what elements in existing environments can be stretched out, pushed to their limits to maximize how play can fulfill needs.

The biggest test lot of these will be North American Street, with its own unique conditions. Two connected sites on North American Street have been chosen to be able to maximize their future growth into and beyond each other.

Another test lot could be Rittenhouse Square, in the city’s most affluent neighborhood, where living conditions and lifestyles are dramatically different.

TIME

How long will these Summit Spaces survive? or How long will they live?

As long as residents want them to. When the neighborhood changes, elements in the system can be detached, replaced and changed. The surface germinal points remain more permanent, but can be changed as well over time. They are elements of the city, pulled into the summit-space and like the city changes, they will change to. A SEMI-TEMPORAL QUALITY.

PART 3: STRATEGY