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The Adele Levy Memorial Playground

The Adele Levy Memorial Playground was designed by sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) with the help of architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974). It was subject to public scrutiny and was redrafted from 1961 until its final version in 1966. The projected building site spanned an area between 103rd Street and 105th Street to Riverside Drive, NYC.

Though it was never built, the landscaping along with the constructed elements of the Levy Memorial Playground embody both designers’ perceptions of play with the concepts of functionalism, monumentality, and spontaneity governing the project.

Design: This project was considered one of the most innovative “playscapes” or “play gardens” of Isamu Noguchi’s career; focusing on playground equipment as a sculptural phenomenon, he perceived his own role as designer was to accommodate the instinctive behaviors of children. Kahn’s objective, on the other hand, was to create “a community of play” in which children would develop their social skills in an environment of “intimacy” and “friendship”, and his attention was devoted to the fluidity and spontaneity he hoped the space would inspire. Noguchi himself preferred that the play-space feel “infinite” to children, while Kahn wanted to incorporate basic geometric shapes; the compromise between the two designers manifested itself in the broken geometric shapes which engendered spontaneous, biomorphic, and fluid qualities, often adhering to the natural contours of the landscape. The “plural openness” which one would have experienced had it been built, would appeal to all ages; there would have been benches for older visitors to rest on, equipment built to a child’s scale, and social environments like a skating rink and swimming pool for teens to congregate. Not only were small children encouraged to use the space, teens, the elderly, and the guardians of the children were considered in the design of the play-space.

All equipment was to be made of concrete, intended to be durable and indestructible by children. The basic components of the playground included an amphitheater, a maze (Noguchi’s interpretation of a jungle gym), various sculptural installations, and a play mound (called “Play Mountain”).

The Amphitheater: Originally envisioned a traditional layout—an amphitheater surrounded on all sides by seating with a stage in the center—this space was meant to be the epicenter of the entire playground with activity flowing forth from it. It was minimalistic and completely public and accessible by anyone who might be playing nearby. In light of the desire to make the space available to all, Noguchi and Kahn decided to restructure the theater with only three sides in 1962, and in ’66 the seating around it was redesigned so that the entire playground was visible. The final draft of the theater included an elevated stage surrounded by three sections of seating so that sound would reverberate to the farthest rows of the audience. The fourth side of the amphitheater was open to the rest of the playground, and in its final form, the space was called “The Climbing Theater” because the stairs leading to the seating were uneven and ideal for children to climb on. Noguchi and Kahn were interested in creating a space which might have a multiplicity of uses, evinced by the resulting design of the amphitheater as both a place for climbing and performance.

Maze/Jungle Gym: The typical “jungle gym” is a dome-like structure with beams of equal length organized in consistent geometric patterns; inspired by this model, Noguchi designed an entirely new structure for the “jungle gym” which he called a “maze.” This structure, unlike its predecessor, was based on the ground, and, rather than using beams of equal length connecting at the ends, he drafted this piece of equipment to have dividers of varying lengths and widths. The maze ended up looking like a series of flower boxes, allowing for children to play not only vertically but also horizontally. The theme of unrestricted play was executed in part by this piece of equipment which in no way limited the motion of those using it. Before the Levy Memorial Playground was even conceived, Noguchi had commented (with reference to the jungle gym structure itself): “A jungle gym is transformed into an enormous basket that encourages the most complex ascents and all but obviates falls. In other words, the playground, instead of telling the child what to do (swing here, climb there) becomes a place for endless exploration, of endless opportunity for changing play” (1952).

Mounds (“Play Mountains”): Designed by Kahn as some of the only boundaries of play, introducing the transition from softer interactions to rougher play, the Play Mountains consisted of above-ground and underground spaces. Externally, there would be one larger and one smaller mound, which would both contain several slides built into the sides of the mounds themselves. Both would face the Hudson River and be isolated from the rest of the playground. The underground spaces (called “light traps” by Noguchi) would have skylights and be insulated for the winter months.

Meaning: As Kahn commented: “The Play in the Levy Playground is not predetermined and planned in advance, it is created in the instant, spontaneously, and gives rise to a constant voluntary expression of freedom.” Noguchi agreed that playgrounds “were meant to be interactive, suggest activities without precisely demanding them.” Louis Kahn as an architect believed that the issues of functionality and monumentality needed to be examined and redefined; he felt that spaces ought to have several functions and that the purpose or intentional use of a space should determine its form…not precedent. He believed that monumentality within architecture had the power to create community, acknowledging collective memory, and eliminate hackneyed symbols. In his other works like the Phillips Exeter Library, NH, the Kimbell Art Museum, TX, or the Salk Institute for Biology, CA, he experiments with organic elements like flowing water or filtered natural light, and for Levy Memorial Playground, he allowed the natural landscape to dictate the shape of the separate areas (the amphitheater, play mounds, etc.) in accordance with his philosophy that “man makes rules…nature is law.” Kahn’s belief that materials themselves, with their inherent characteristics, determine how they are to be utilized, and this too influenced the template for the Levy Memorial Playground. Because of concrete’s harsh, enduring qualities, it was chosen as the sole material for the projected construction, and Noguchi hoped that, on account of this selection, the space would not represent the clichéd idea of a playground, but rather would resemble the city streets that children would have played on or encountered before.

Why It Was Never Constructed Throughout the design process, which began in 1961, there were objections to the playscape from the Riverside Parks and Playgrounds Committee with regards to construction; there was concern that the scale of such elements as the Play Mountains were too great for smaller children to play on and that the material was dangerous and uninspiring considering the surrounding urban atmosphere. In 1962, the Committee called the plan “a four-block, massive concrete structure.” The playground was reconsidered some years later after Noguchi and Kahn redesigned the space to include more grass and trees. Noguchi recalled that “each time there would be some objection—and Louis Kahn would then always say, ‘Wonderful! We can start all over again. We can make something better.’” Though the playground would be completely funded, with some $500,000 coming from the City of New York and the other half from a private donation by Adele Levy’s sister, Ms. Asculi, the playground remains a work of paper architecture. When Republican John V. Lindsay defeated the incumbent Democrat Mayor Wagner, the City of New York underwent major budget cutbacks, including the funding for this playground.

Conclusion The marriage of Isamu Noguchi’s sculptural, indefinite outlook on landscape architecture and Louis Kahn’s understanding of functional space, though not always happy, successfully blended functionality and monumentality in their collaboration on the Levy Memorial Playground. With Kahn responsible for such structural components like the retaining walls and amphitheater and Noguchi in charge of the installations like the sandbox and monkey bars, the design for the playground became an experiment in form , obeying the natural landscape more so than any conventional, preconceived ideas of “the playground,” and, as Kahn would state, “Form has no shape or dimension…form is the recognition or the realization of the characteristics of one thing and another.” As Noguchi explained, “…everything that is carries traces of how it was made. For Kahn there was always continuity, no matter how much things changed, a notion he distilled in his oft-quoted phrase: ‘What will be has always been.’” Category:Architecture Category:Playgrounds