“Aldo Van Eyck’s Playgrounds (1947 – 1978)” 

 
7 Min Read, 1415 Words 
 
Task: ​Review and reflect on the following article. Observe how simple forms and 
shapes have been used to create a sense of place for a specific user. Identify how 
certain forms could provide clues to how you want a space to be used.  
 
The text and most of the images are taken from an article written by ​
Mariabruna 
Fabrizi​
: Human Structures and Architectural Archetypes: Aldo Van Eyck’s 
Playgrounds (1947 – 1978) on the SOCKS studio website. (February 11, 2018) The 
article provides a glimpse into the revolutionary design of playgrounds across the city 
of Amsterdam post World War II. Additional images have been added to the article.
 
 
 
A hugely influential Dutch 
architect and theorist, 
Aldo Van Eyck​ conducted 
a thirty-years-long (1947 – 
1978) research through 
practice designing 
hundreds of public 
playgrounds in 
Amsterdam while 
working for the Urban 
Development 
Department. 
 
 

Prayog - Experiments in teaching and learning (Shivani Seshadri) 

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Appeared after World War II, (the first one was built in 1947), the playgrounds 
slowly found their place in derelict sectors around the city as well as in parks and 
squares of very different sizes and shapes, conveniently merging with the city’s 
fabric. The playgrounds are all different, but composed by a certain number of 
recurring elements declined in different sizes and put in varying relationships 
among them. Very few means are put into play, reflecting the postwar lack of 
resources for public works, but also a specific ethics and aesthetic research which 
characterized a group of architects at the time, an interest in materials used for 
their specific meaning, or, as synthesized by the French word: brut materials. 

Prayog - Experiments in teaching and learning (Shivani Seshadri) 

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Throughout his career, Van Eyck looked for a way to connect contemporary 
design to atemporal shapes derived from the observation of people movement 
and interaction with space in different epochs. These shapes are abstract and 
reduced while capable to form terrains able to richly support inhabitants activities 
and never influencing them too rigidly. Van Eyck recognized and implemented a 
connection between an archaic system of forms and the research of avant-garde 
artists into abstraction and archetypes. 

 
 

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“The vocabulary of the playgrounds is based on geometric concrete sandpits, 
which appear like small archipelagos and groups of stepping stones, both massive 
and anchored in the ground, and lighter structures, arches, domes and frames 
made of tube steel resonating with archetypes of architecture.  
 

 
The arrangement of the elements in the playgrounds is always non-hierarchical 
and based on a careful compositional balance which is able to create tension and 
intensity between the objects while allowing a multiplicity of paths around the 
forms. 

Prayog - Experiments in teaching and learning (Shivani Seshadri) 

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The playgrounds constitute a terrain for imagination which put into tension the 
universal human activity of play with permanent geometrical structures and 
physical systems of organization found in far-away cultures and in different 
moments in time.

- End –   

 
 
Works Cited 
1. Fabrizi, Mariabruna. “Human Structures and Architectural Archetypes: Aldo 
Van Eyck's...” S
​ OCKS​
, 11 Feb. 2018, 
socks-studio.com/2018/02/11/human-structures-and-architectural-archet
ypes-aldo-van-eycks-playgrounds-1947-1978/. 
2. Withagen, Rob, and Simone R. Caljouw. “Aldo Van Eyck's Playgrounds: 
Aesthetics, Affordances, and Creativity.” ​Frontiers​
, Frontiers, 20 June 2017, 
www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01130/full#:~:text=After 
World War II, the,stimulate the creativity of children. 
www.play-scapes.com/tag/aldo-van-eyck/. 
3. “Aldo Van Eyck Archives.” P ​ layscapes​
, 
www.play-scapes.com/tag/aldo-van-eyck/. 

Prayog - Experiments in teaching and learning (Shivani Seshadri) 

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