Until the 1980s – and in rare cases until today – playgrounds were places for social experiments, risky projects, and spectacular sculptures. Architects, urban planners, artists, parents, and children were invited to leave their comfort zone and to venture something new.

A focal point for ideas about education and childhood, about urban planning and public space, about architecture and art, about creativity and control, the playground has repeatedly resisted institutional and ideological appropriation and grown in its own, sometimes anarchic, ways.

The Playground Project will bring back many exemplary, but now often forgotten playground initiatives, pioneering acts and adventures with a playground in which children (and inner children) can run, hide, climb and imagine. The exhibition includes Marjory Allen (Lady Allen of Hurtwood), Assemble, Joseph Brown, Riccardo Dalisi, Richard Dattner, Aldo van Eyck, M. Paul Friedberg, Michael Grossert, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Alfred Ledermann, Yvan Pestalozzi, Group Ludic, Egon Møller-Nielsen, Niki de Saint Phalle, Mitsuru Senda, Colin Ward and others.

The Playground Project is realised in cooperation with Kunsthalle Zürich

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