JEPPE HEIN
CIRCULAR APPEARING ROOMS
BUNDESKUNSTHALLE, BONN, GERMANY
RECURRING INSTALLATION SINCE 2018
The playground is a by-product of the industrialized city of the 20th century. More than almost anywhere else, it condenses ideas about education and childhood, urban planning and public space, architecture and art, and creativity and control. In the process, the playground repeatedly eludes institutional and ideological appropriation and produces its own, sometimes anarchic blossoms. This juxtaposition of different expectations, momentary achievements, and adventurous notions is what makes the playground in the first place.
The Playground Project illustrates the most important moments in the history of the playground through outstanding designers. Projects by artists, designers, activists, and architects are shown in numerous images, films, plans, and models. Well-known figures such as Aldo van Eyck, Isamu Noguchi, or Palle Nielsen meet forgotten and rediscovered pioneers such as Joseph Brown, Richard Dattner, Group Ludic, Riccardo Dalisi, Joseph Schagerl, and many others. In the process, four great moments of change become apparent: at the beginning of the 20th century, social reformers took the child from the street to the playground. In 1930, the idea emerged that children should play less on playground equipment and more with natural materials. In 1960, the decade of do-it-yourself, parents, children, and neighbourhood groups built the places themselves. The 1980s heralded a crisis in playground design with the end of social utopias and the beginning of regulation.
The work is a circular water pavilion with an enclosing wall of water shooting up from jets in the ground, which is sub-divided into smaller spaces by four independent walls within the structure. The water walls randomly rise and fall, defining all possible configurations of the space before changing shape and appearance. The visitor is allowed to move within the structure from space to space, finding himself in differently shaped spaces inside, or suddenly on the outside, of the pavilion without any possibility to control or govern the confinement or exclusion. Installed in an open, public space, the water pavilion activates the area and invites people to make use of the work, either as a space for seclusion and relaxation or the opposite, a place of pure joy and playfulness.