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What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe

Sydney Morning Herald

an hour ago

Sydney Morning Herald

What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe

James Bond creator Ian Fleming famously named one of his most notorious villains after the modernist architect Erno Goldfinger. For critics disdainful of Brutalist social housing, this was convenient casting. They saw the creators of these pared-back, concrete structures as criminally responsible for the social ills – and shredded elbows – that befell residents in housing projects such as Goldfinger's Balfron Tower in London and Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith's Park Hill Estate in Sheffield. 'Surrounding the Balfron Tower was this series of windswept concrete walkways and this quite weird concrete playground,' says Australian artist Simon Terrill, who had a residency in Balfron Tower. 'If you fall over you lose the skin off your knee or your elbow.' Yet, like many defenders of Brutalist architecture, Terrill recognised 'a distinction between the exterior, which was quite bleak, and the interior, which was completely amazing'. Working with British architecture collective Assemble, Terrill created the Brutalist Playground, an interactive installation series that recast three rough-textured concrete playgrounds in pastel-coloured foam. 'Remaking those objects at one-to-one scale in foam gives an opportunity to revisit those utopian ideas and reflect on our changing relationship with ideas of risk and agency and what play means,' says Terrill. Their foam version of Park Hill Estate's playground features in the latest incarnation of the international touring exhibition The Playground Project. Since 2013, the exhibition has travelled to eight countries, from the US to Russia and Ireland to Switzerland, adding regional examples with each incarnation. Travelling to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, it is showing at Incinerator Gallery in Aberfeldie, which is housed in a disused incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony in 1929. Curated by Swiss urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter, the exhibition is a fascinating social history incorporating early childhood development, psychology, architecture, urban planning, landscape design and art. The Incinerator's Jade Niklai commissioned local content including BoardGrove Architects for the exhibition design and a new exterior playground called Ringtales. Visitors wend in and out of the various colourful floors and stairwells of the building, which itself feels like a playground writ large. Burkhalter's playground story is essentially a response to industrialisation, urban migration and density pressures. Equally it pulses with an adrenaline rush of risk. The show peels back the layers of protective bubble wrap, revealing 19th-century qualms about potentially contaminated sand gardens – ironic given children worked in dangerous factories – to legitimate safety concerns over the so-called 'junk' or adventure playgrounds pioneered in Europe in the 1940s. Junk playgrounds contained loose elements – building and scrap materials, natural elements and tools – that kids controlled themselves, sharing and negotiating with each other. English landscape architect Marjory Allen, who imported them to Britain, the US and Japan, declared: 'Better a broken bone than a broken spirit.' This plucky ethos suited a postwar generation that grew up scampering over London bomb sites. The Blitz spirit transferred nicely to the relatively safe terrain of the junk/adventure playground. The adventure playground movement spawned regional examples worldwide. Well-loved local versions sprang up in St Kilda, Fitzroy and The Venny in Kensington. As The Venny's honorary principal, David Kutcher, explained in the first of a series of accompanying talks for the exhibition: 'The risk of any loss through physical injury is actually low. Children require exposure to setbacks, failures, shocks and stumbles in order to develop strength and self-reliance and resilience. The road to resilience is paved with risk.' As modernism took hold in the 1950s and '60s, industrialisation infiltrated the playground. Concrete was one response. Steel and plastics were another. For Burkhalter, the Swiss-designed modular play sculpture the Lozziwurm from 1972 is emblematic of the new industrial materials. It also prompts one of the key forms of socialisation – negotiating with others. There is no one way to travel through the worm. The idea is that kids sort it out. Loading Risk aversion reached its apotheosis in the 1970s in the US. 'It made sense at the beginning because playgrounds were so badly maintained that there were a lot of accidents,' says Burkhalter. Today, while all manner of regulations govern community facilities, there is also recognition that safety needn't hamper creative play and risk-taking. Risk is built into artist Mike Hewson's controversial Southbank playground Rocks on Wheels. Its ad hoc charm – part Heath Robinson, part Wile E. Coyote – looks set to detonate at any time. Its teetery quality encourages risk and creativity as the playground itself looks like it's been built by a child. Artists feature prominently in the exhibition. Burkhalter's initial interest in playgrounds was inspired by the heroic dedication of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. For more than 30 years, from 1933 to 1966, Noguchi planned a range of playgrounds, from landscapes to sculptural equipment. Most went unrealised. He once recalled pitching his Play Mountain to Robert Moses, New York's imperious city planner, who 'just laughed his head off and more or less threw us out'. Among Burkhalter's own urban planning colleagues, the reaction to the playground project was almost as dismissive as Moses. 'Playgrounds were considered small and not very prestigious,' she says. And this despite the outsized influence of Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who said that 'play is the work of childhood'. Burkhalter remained undaunted: 'I understood that the people who were active in these fields had visions about design, society, childhood. That fascinated me.' Terrill is one of three Australian artists who feature in the Melbourne show. Trawlwoolway multidisciplinary artist Edwina Green won the competition to design a First Nations playable public art sculpture. Her abstracted oyster honours the cultural significance of the Maribyrnong River and 'invites children to play, imagine, and connect with Country', she says. Artist Emily Floyd and designer Mary Featherston literally bring the politics of play and community cooperation to the table. The pair's Round Table includes a child-height table and chairs; each of its elements – day care, infant health, kindergarten – is a seat at the table. Indeed the exhibition highlights that playgrounds aren't just about children. Professor Mel Dodd, dean of art, design and architecture at Monash University, says: 'The health and wellbeing of families in smaller, increasingly denser environments relies on public places that you not only can safely bring your child to play, but also socialise yourself. Amenity of that nature is absolutely critical.' Playgrounds also offer citywide lessons. 'The design of the public realm can be playful for adults as well as children,' says Dodd. 'It's definitely the case that playfulness aids health and wellbeing. We need our public environments to look fantastic, to look exciting.'

The Age

an hour ago

The Age

What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe

James Bond creator Ian Fleming famously named one of his most notorious villains after the modernist architect Erno Goldfinger. For critics disdainful of Brutalist social housing, this was convenient casting. They saw the creators of these pared-back, concrete structures as criminally responsible for the social ills – and shredded elbows – that befell residents in housing projects such as Goldfinger's Balfron Tower in London and Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith's Park Hill Estate in Sheffield. 'Surrounding the Balfron Tower was this series of windswept concrete walkways and this quite weird concrete playground,' says Australian artist Simon Terrill, who had a residency in Balfron Tower. 'If you fall over you lose the skin off your knee or your elbow.' Yet, like many defenders of Brutalist architecture, Terrill recognised 'a distinction between the exterior, which was quite bleak, and the interior, which was completely amazing'. Working with British architecture collective Assemble, Terrill created the Brutalist Playground, an interactive installation series that recast three rough-textured concrete playgrounds in pastel-coloured foam. 'Remaking those objects at one-to-one scale in foam gives an opportunity to revisit those utopian ideas and reflect on our changing relationship with ideas of risk and agency and what play means,' says Terrill. Their foam version of Park Hill Estate's playground features in the latest incarnation of the international touring exhibition The Playground Project. Since 2013, the exhibition has travelled to eight countries, from the US to Russia and Ireland to Switzerland, adding regional examples with each incarnation. Travelling to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, it is showing at Incinerator Gallery in Aberfeldie, which is housed in a disused incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony in 1929. Curated by Swiss urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter, the exhibition is a fascinating social history incorporating early childhood development, psychology, architecture, urban planning, landscape design and art. The Incinerator's Jade Niklai commissioned local content including BoardGrove Architects for the exhibition design and a new exterior playground called Ringtales. Visitors wend in and out of the various colourful floors and stairwells of the building, which itself feels like a playground writ large. Burkhalter's playground story is essentially a response to industrialisation, urban migration and density pressures. Equally it pulses with an adrenaline rush of risk. The show peels back the layers of protective bubble wrap, revealing 19th-century qualms about potentially contaminated sand gardens – ironic given children worked in dangerous factories – to legitimate safety concerns over the so-called 'junk' or adventure playgrounds pioneered in Europe in the 1940s. Junk playgrounds contained loose elements – building and scrap materials, natural elements and tools – that kids controlled themselves, sharing and negotiating with each other. English landscape architect Marjory Allen, who imported them to Britain, the US and Japan, declared: 'Better a broken bone than a broken spirit.' This plucky ethos suited a postwar generation that grew up scampering over London bomb sites. The Blitz spirit transferred nicely to the relatively safe terrain of the junk/adventure playground. The adventure playground movement spawned regional examples worldwide. Well-loved local versions sprang up in St Kilda, Fitzroy and The Venny in Kensington. As The Venny's honorary principal, David Kutcher, explained in the first of a series of accompanying talks for the exhibition: 'The risk of any loss through physical injury is actually low. Children require exposure to setbacks, failures, shocks and stumbles in order to develop strength and self-reliance and resilience. The road to resilience is paved with risk.' As modernism took hold in the 1950s and '60s, industrialisation infiltrated the playground. Concrete was one response. Steel and plastics were another. For Burkhalter, the Swiss-designed modular play sculpture the Lozziwurm from 1972 is emblematic of the new industrial materials. It also prompts one of the key forms of socialisation – negotiating with others. There is no one way to travel through the worm. The idea is that kids sort it out. Loading Risk aversion reached its apotheosis in the 1970s in the US. 'It made sense at the beginning because playgrounds were so badly maintained that there were a lot of accidents,' says Burkhalter. Today, while all manner of regulations govern community facilities, there is also recognition that safety needn't hamper creative play and risk-taking. Risk is built into artist Mike Hewson's controversial Southbank playground Rocks on Wheels. Its ad hoc charm – part Heath Robinson, part Wile E. Coyote – looks set to detonate at any time. Its teetery quality encourages risk and creativity as the playground itself looks like it's been built by a child. Artists feature prominently in the exhibition. Burkhalter's initial interest in playgrounds was inspired by the heroic dedication of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. For more than 30 years, from 1933 to 1966, Noguchi planned a range of playgrounds, from landscapes to sculptural equipment. Most went unrealised. He once recalled pitching his Play Mountain to Robert Moses, New York's imperious city planner, who 'just laughed his head off and more or less threw us out'. Among Burkhalter's own urban planning colleagues, the reaction to the playground project was almost as dismissive as Moses. 'Playgrounds were considered small and not very prestigious,' she says. And this despite the outsized influence of Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who said that 'play is the work of childhood'. Burkhalter remained undaunted: 'I understood that the people who were active in these fields had visions about design, society, childhood. That fascinated me.' Terrill is one of three Australian artists who feature in the Melbourne show. Trawlwoolway multidisciplinary artist Edwina Green won the competition to design a First Nations playable public art sculpture. Her abstracted oyster honours the cultural significance of the Maribyrnong River and 'invites children to play, imagine, and connect with Country', she says. Artist Emily Floyd and designer Mary Featherston literally bring the politics of play and community cooperation to the table. The pair's Round Table includes a child-height table and chairs; each of its elements – day care, infant health, kindergarten – is a seat at the table. Indeed the exhibition highlights that playgrounds aren't just about children. Professor Mel Dodd, dean of art, design and architecture at Monash University, says: 'The health and wellbeing of families in smaller, increasingly denser environments relies on public places that you not only can safely bring your child to play, but also socialise yourself. Amenity of that nature is absolutely critical.' Playgrounds also offer citywide lessons. 'The design of the public realm can be playful for adults as well as children,' says Dodd. 'It's definitely the case that playfulness aids health and wellbeing. We need our public environments to look fantastic, to look exciting.'

This is where Meghan's As Ever products are really made

Courier-Mail

14 hours ago

Courier-Mail

This is where Meghan's As Ever products are really made

Don't miss out on the headlines from Royals. Followed categories will be added to My News. COMMENT It's official. Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex has added 'vigneron' to her ever-growing fleet of job titles that already includes jam seller, flower sprinkle proselytiser, tele producer, candle making instructor, apiarist, podcaster, handbag and vegan latte company investor, children's book author, former working HRH, calligrapher, actress and blogger, and designated cheerer upper-er of Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex. X SUBSCRIBER ONLY On Tuesday, on what would have been her mother-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales' 64th birthday, the duchess finally got into the vino business, launching her As Ever lifestyle brand's first bottle of the good stuff, a rosé, which sold out in less than an hour. But even when shelves are restocked again, I'm assuming by an overalls-wearing Harry supportively proudly working up some manly calluses on his hands, don't expect it to land in your local bottle-o near anytime soon. To even try the drop would cost you AUD$167, hardly making it Friday drinks-quaffable stuff. Meghan Markle's Rose wine in her As Ever range. Picture: Supplied (The 'dry, and refreshing' blend was only sold with a minimum order of three bottles, reportedly due to shipping costs and for environmental reasons.) That works out at about $45 a bottle for which you could also get 2.4 bottles of Kylie Minogue's rosé, 3.2 bottles of Snoop Dogg's, and 1.2 bottles of Daniel Riccardo's version. Should the logistics of getting your hands on a taste of Meghan's wine be surmounted, don't expect it to have been produced anywhere near the Sussexes' Montecito home. According to the Telegraph the tipple is produced by the Fairwinds Estate in Napa Valley, 630 km north and a six hour drive away. The Napa Valley vineyard where Meghan sourced her rosé also reportedly makes wines for other starry wine labels, including those of Barry Manilow and John Wayne. (Who knew that Wayne, after ridin' his trusty steed into some fly-bitten frontier town, loved nothing more than moseying over to his the saloon for a big, bold grenache?) This is believed to be the factory where Meghan's tea is made. Picture: Google Maps In the last couple of weeks more details have emerged about where As Ever products are sourced from. Sure, As Ever is a brand built on the image of shimmering, sun-kissed shots of Meghan picking apricots and flowers in her picturesque garden and her contentedly stirring a bubbling pot of jam in her kitchen, all very David Hockney-meets-Delia Smith. However, so far the provenance of some As Ever lines appears to be far less hashtaggable and dreamy. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pictured at Beyoncé's LA concert. Picture: Instagram The first scene of the duchess' With Love Meghan series showed her tending to her bees, whispering 'Look at how much honey we have' but Daily Mail has reported that As Ever's range of fruit spreads, herbal teas, flower sprinkles and honey are sourced from a company which has a factory 3,200 plus kilometres away in Illinois. (Their headquarters are 560 plus kilometres away in California.) The firm, called The Republic of Tea, also makes Bridgerton and Downton Abbey-branded tea. Meghan Markle sold out much of her As Ever product range in less than an hour. Picture: Instagram Thanks to the Mail putting the calculator app to good use, The Republic of Tea's hibiscus tea bags work out at costing $0.48 per cup of tea while the As Ever ones are $1.52 each. Let's be realistic here. The Duchess of Sussex might be a passionate home cook and her kitchen might have the same square meterage of a mid-size metro two-bedder but to commercially produce enough jam, sorry spread, was always going to require outside help. Likewise her teabags. Did anyone really think that Harry was down the shed, neatly spooning dried hibiscus petals into little sachets and mulling his life choices? Of her products, a source close to Meghan told the Mail, they 'started with the version Meghan makes at home and worked to develop a version of it that could be produced at scale.' Fans clearly don't give a fig about where duchess' As Ever goodies are actually being cooked up with all three of the As Ever stock releases selling out in less than 60 minutes. The range appears to be very popular. Picture: Instagram Meghan Markle makes homemade jam with her daughter, Lilibet, in their kitchen for the 'As Ever' range. Picture: Instagram (On June20, the second day the duchess' wares went on sale, the brand's website was visited half a million times, the Mail has reported.) However, the As Ever roll out has not been all peachy. The 43-year-old will give out free jars of her spread after a technical issue saw the site continue to take orders after overselling on the release of June's 'summer drop'. Something similar happened with sales of As Ever honey in April with the site providing refunds and offering free products after they continued selling honey after stock had actually run out. Depending on your Sussex stance, this either only reflects the high degree of public demand for Meghan's products and how hungry Americans are to buy into her charmed As Ever vision or says something about a business struggling to find its feet. Meghan's As Ever product range. Picture: Supplied As the Daily Beast's Tom Sykes pointed out ahead of the rosé's debut, As Ever's non- alcoholic products have only been available for purchase for less than two hours in the three months, which equates the As Ever's food 'shelves [having] been fully stocked for just 0.01 percent of the time' since launch. What remains to be seen is whether this all only cultivates an air of exclusivity and rarity and whets shoppers' appetites or whether it will just frustrate them. Also, does only having products on sale for less than an hour, every so often, make for a sustainable, profitable business concern? Meghan Markle swings in a garden in a new post to promote her As Ever products. Picture: Instagram In March the Telegraph reported that the Duchess of Sussex 'thinks she's going to be a billionaire' thanks to her growing portfolio of ventures and projects. At least we know this, if Harry has been helping out behind the scenes, it might not have all been hard graft. The production of Meghan's proprietary blend of rosé saw the duchess 'heavily involved' for 'many months,' per the Telegraph, which included 'roping in friends and colleagues to conduct multiple taste tests at her home.' Hard work if you can get it. Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles. Originally published as Fans shocked to discover where Meghan's products are really made

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What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe

What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe

This is where Meghan's As Ever products are really made

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What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe

What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe

This is where Meghan's As Ever products are really made

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