ALDO VAN EYCKS

PLAYGROUNDS
AMSTERDAM.
1947 | 2011
Abstract
The object of study of this article are Aldo van Eycks playgrounds, built in Amsterdam
between 1947 and 1978, and intends to give continuation to an effort of documentation
and updating present in an exhibition and a series of publications that started in 2002. In
a field trip (April 2011) some of these playgrounds have been revisited. The reading of
these spaces have been guided by the questionings organized by Marc Aug in the theory
of places, by the introduction of the term situations by the International Situationist, as
well as by the photo essays and propositions that introduce the as found concept. As
a product of this questioning and investigation a photo essay is delivered: it shows how
the playgrounds, as ready-mades, characterized by the simplicity and neutrality of its
design, reveal their surroundings (that becomes background and articulated element in
each one of them), as found. As a series of events, they structure a network of places
with capacity of transformation and re-codification, constantly guaranteed by participation
in several levels.

Bertelmanplein,
Amsterdam-Oudzuid,
1947. Photo: 1956. In:
Lefaivre, de Roode,
2002, p. 85. Original:
Gemeenterarchief
Amsterdam.

Zeedijk, AmsterdamCentrum, 1956. In:

Lefaivre, de Roode,
2002, p. 33. Original:
Gemeenterarchief
Amsterdam.

Key words
Architectural urbanism (architektur urbanistik); playground; place; as found; Situational
Urbanism.

Place,
as found

Laurierstraat, Amsterdam-Centrum, 1956-57, 1965.In: Lefaivre, de Roode, 2002,

p. 50-51. Original: Gemeenterarchief Amsterdam

Drawing by the Site Preparation Division of the Department of Public Works

with sandpits, somersaut frames, climbing frames, play tables and climbing
mountains designed by Aldo van Eyck. In: In: Lefaivre, de Roode, 2002, p. 90.
Original: Dennis Hogers, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Network of playgrounds in
1961. In: Lefaivre, de Roode,
2002, p. 43. Original: TU
Delft (DKS group).

Tactical operation: identify and

mark derelict plots. In: Lefaivre,
de Roode, 2002, p. 30. Original:
Gemeenterarchief Amsterdam.

ALDO VAN EYCKS

PLAYGROUNDS
AMSTERDAM.
1947, Bertelmanplein. architect Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999) builds his
first playground in Amsterdam. Following that first gesture, in the coming
decades (until 1978), more than 700 playgrounds have been built. 90 of
these survived into the 21st century with their original layout.1
In 2002, the exhibition The Playgrounds and the city2 celebrated
this created network, compiling the existing documents and making it
legible in the Amsterdam map. In the same year, the Archis magazine
published Psychogeographic Bicycle Tour of Aldo van Eycks Amsterdam
Playgrounds3, that, as the exhibition, had the intention to reveal a serie of
images showing before and after, updating the information about the state
of the playgrounds between 1976 and 2002. In 2009, Jonathan Hanahan
and Rory Hyde published in the Volume (n.22) magazine a tour through the
same playgrounds. The intention: to explore the guide produced in 2002
and revisit the playgrounds, again updating their condition.
As a continuation of all that effort for the update, this fieldtrip (April/2011)
was guided by another question. Besides sharing the interest about the
actual stand of these playgrounds, which have and which have not been
modified, it interest to investigate to which extent the playgrounds create
urban places4. Given their character of neutrality once they were always
constituted by the same elements: the sand box, the climbing metal elements
and a sand and stone floor this investigation questions if the playgrounds
might be read as a tool that reveal its surroundings, as ready-mades that
1 Oudenampsen, 2009.
2 Exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 15th June 18th Sep., 2002.
3 Lefaivre, Liane, Boterman, Marlies / Loen, Suzanne / Miedema, Merel, 2003.
4 Place as defined by Marc Aug.

reveal the place as found5, a network of articulated places.

An emergency measure: temporary spaces - unused plots of land inbetween
the housing blocks 6- were to be reprogrammed into playgrounds by very
simple measures. Critic7 towards a monotonous functional plan, Eyck argues
for architecture to be something to facilitate human activity and promote
social interaction.8
He designed a simple glossary defining a vocabulary that is present in
each of the built playgrounds: a concrete bordered sandpit, round stones,
a structure of tumbling bars, trees and benches. The standardization did
not intend to replicate the monotony of the functionalist, modern blocks.
Contrary to that, it was about acting in a tactical way in the existing city (as
found) taking advantage of sites that offered the chance for a temporary
function.
The articulation of these elements in the space illustrate a series of exercises
of non-hirarchical ordering.9 The basic elements are recombined in different
compositions depending on the surroundings. It recreates the playgrounds
new in each new location as a support awaiting for interaction, use, play.10
Its simple design was consciously thought as to stimulate the imagination
and participation in the use of the playgrounds.
The raw materials employed (concrete, metal and stone) and the simplicity
of the design creates a set of homogeneous character that highlights the
surroundings, that have been maintained as found. As a background, they
become the most important element, transforming open spaces in places
5 as found, Peter and Alison Smithson: A. & P. Smithson, The As Found and the Found, in David
Robbins, ed., The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty. Cambridge, Mass.,
MIT Press, 1990. pp. 20-25.
6 Created after modern functionalist principles of architecture and urban planning under the pressure
of the Post II World War housing shortage. Postwar urban planning in the Netherlands minly consisted
of a rushed and economized implementation of the prewar ideals of the modernist architects like Le
Corbusier, Giedion, and Gropius. The city was in derelict condition, falling short of housing stock and
of collective equipment and open spaces; Amsterdam new plan (Cornelis van Eesterens Algemeen
Uitbreidingsplan (AUP, 1934) embraced the ideal of functional separation in which housing, work, traffic
and recreation were to be functionally separated. (In: Oudenampsen, 2009).
7 The Team X, from which Aldo van Eyck was a member has position itself against the Congrs Internationaux dArchitecture Moderne (CIAM), that took place for the last time in 1959. The Team X would
replace the old ratioonalist and functionalist approach for something new. The new architecture was to
be modular, open to participation and was to structure creative practices.
8 van Eyck, Aldo, Het Verhaal van een Andere Gedachte (The Story of Another Thought). In: Forum
7, Amsterdam and Hilversum, 1959. In: Oudenampsen, 2009.
9 Oudenampsen, 2009.
10 As defined by the International Situacionist (IS).

strongly connected to the local specificness of each spot.

The playgrounds were not just elements to climb, but a place to meet, to
talk and to perceive and read the space new. The playgrounds redesign the
relationship with the existing surrounding, stressing their interstitial nature.
The created places are determined by the occasional, the temporary
appropriation, the use, the moments and the situations created out of it. In
this sense, it goes hand in hand with Henri Lefevres Theory of Moments11, in
which the city is defined as a general frame or an open-structure to different
occasional moments, defining temporary situations and constantly re-codifying
the physical space.
The concept of the city as structure identifies a network of sites to be
reprogrammed, instantly changing their vocation and adding meaning and
identity based on the concept of place12. We read in Lefaivre: Like his artist
friends Piet Mondrian and Constant Nieuwenhuys, van Eyck thought of the
ideal city as a labyrinth of small, intimate territories, or more poetically, a
random constellation of stars. A playground on every street corner was just a
first step on the journey to the ludic city: the city of play. Whatever time and
space mean, he used to thunder at his modernist architectural colleagues,
place and occasion mean more. 13
All of these arguments point at the idea of another city to be produced,
differently than it was being planned in the Postwar. While reading the existing,
reinterpreting it before designing it, Eyck highlights the ordinary, which becomes
portrayed in the first playground built in 1947. On the same year, H. Lefebvres
Critique de la Vie Quotidienne was published. 14
The use of empty sites reveals a tactical operation in the city, taking advantage
of the potential offer by a situation of change and reconstruction. Playgrounds
were to occupy vacant, derelict sites.
The first playground for Bertelmanplein was a successful experiment. If, back in
1947 the success was measured by the intensity of use and free appropriation
11 Developed in parallel with the International Situationist, in which the element of play, and the playful
man (Homo Ludens) would prepare a new city full of ludic possibilities to come. For the IS, play is developed into a subversive strategy to change the modern, capitalist city.
12 In Non-Lieux. Introduction une anthropologie de la surmodernit (Le Seuil, 1992), Marc Aug
defines Lieux (Places) as a spaces defined by its relation to history, and the identity formed out of this
relationship.
13 Lefaivre, 2002.
14 Lefebvres theory had Paris periphery as its study object.

of its glossary, in 2011, it can be expressed in the their capacity of adapting

and re-articulating with the local. To visit some of these playgrounds nowadays
reveals an important built object, a concrete built case study that anticipates
the discussion an theorization developed in the following two decades around
the ideas of place (lieux, site and as found), and of play, as a way to subvert
and modify the spaces of our everyday.

References
AUG, Marc. Non-Lieux. Introduction une anthropologie de la surmodernit. Paris: Seuil, 1992.
Hanahan, Jonathan / Hyde, Rory. Aldo van Eyck playground tour 2009, in: Volume Magazine, n 22,
Amsterdam, 2009, pp. 36-39.
Lefaivre, Liane / De Roode, Ingeborg; Van Eyck, Aldo. The Playgrounds and the City (catalog). Stedelijk
Museum Amsterdam, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002.
Lefaivre, Liane / Tzonis, Alexander; VAN EYCK Aldo. Humanist Rebel, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 1999.
Lefaivre, Liane, Ludens Puer, in: Lotus International, n 124, Milan, 2005, pp. 78-85.
Lefaivre, Liane / Boterman, Marlies / Loen, Suzanne / Miedema, Merel, A psychogeographical bicycle tour of
Aldo van Eycks Amsterdam playgrounds, in: Archis, n 3, Amsterdam, 2002, pp.129-135.
Oudenampsen, Merijn, Aldo van Eyck and the City as Playground, in: www.flexmens.org/drupal, 10/10/2009.
VAN DEN BERGEN, Marina, Aldo van Eyck, translation: Billy Nolan, in: http://www.classic.archined.nl/
news/0207/AldovanEyck_playgrounds_eng.html, 13/04/2011.

FIELD RESEARCH April 2011

IMAGE CREDITS
Lefaivre, Liane / De Roode, Ingeborg;
Van Eyck, Aldo. The Playgrounds
and the City (catalog). Stedelijk
Museum Amsterdam, Rotterdam: NAi
Publishers, 2002.
Photos: Marcos L. Rosa.
Sketches: Marcos L. Rosa.