about the book

A handle for an urban strategy on playgrounds and a new perspective on the meaning of play. Ground-up City. Play as a Design Tool maps the continuing history of an urban design strategy for play in the city. Liane Lefaivre has developed a theoretical model for tackling playgrounds as an urban strategy. She steps off from a historical overview of play and the ludic in art, architecture and urban design, focusing particularly on the post-war playgrounds realized in Amsterdam as joint ventures between Aldo van Eyck, Cornelis van Eesteren and Jakoba Mulder. The architecture firm Döll - Atelier voor Bouwkunst explored the possibility of applying the model in two urban redevelopment areas in Rotterdam, Oude Westen in the inner city and Meeuwenplaat in Hoogvliet, an outlying postwar district, refining it into a practical design strategy. A second layer in the book gives an new look at play in a picture essay with a welter of reference images illustrating play as an urban phenomenon. Ground-up City places the playground high on the agenda as an urban design challenge. It also shows how specifying a generic, academic model for a particular situation can lead to a practically applicable design resource.

about the author

Henk Döll
Dutch architect, member of the Board at Bureau Architectenregister , founder and architect at Döll Architecten, Rotterdam , founder and shareholder at Sustainable Dance Club, Rotterdam.

Liane Lefaivre
is Professor and Chair of History and Theory of Architecture, University of Applied Art, Vienna, and Research Associate at the Technical University of Delft.

how to quote

DöLL, Henk (Org.). LEFAIVRE, Liane. Ground-up city. Play as a design tool. 1st edition, Rotterdam, 010 Publishers, 2007.

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