NETWORKED PLAYSCAPES:
REDEFINING THE PLAYGROUND
The world has become urban, communication untethered and objects have surpassed humans connected to the Internet. We are shaped by the intersection of urbanization and ubiquitous computing. Play too has changed with the advent of new technologies. Where streets were the playground and neighbors were our playmates, we now play mediated, across distance, with people we might never meet.
Digital or physical, play is an act of creation and appropriation, a respite in a world geared towards consumption, efficiency and technological determinism. Play is something more than children's fun and playgrounds are more than places for play - physicality, materiality, and commonality, strengthen our experience of the real in the realms of perception, experience, cultural and social interaction. Play is better served when grounded in material form and serves us better when it is free, shared and happens in the public space.
This research project proposes that the advantages of networked play need not be exclusive to the indoors and that playgrounds today may need no real estate, and explores ways in which we can reintroduce play as a tool for integration in the cities-to-be by designing grounds-up, locally informed, networked, hybrid playscapes.
Drawing from research in play, cognitive development, ubiquitous computing, architecture, telepresence, and urban planning, it posits the redesign of playgrounds into Networked Playscapes: grounded in the public space, they take existing urban affordances and add largely invisible technological underpinnings to support networked play.
Space informs play, play informs space. Designed with a broad definition of play in mind, Networked Playscapes provide infrastructure for connection at different scales while centering on ludic interaction across social and geographic divisions. Driven by local idiosyncrasies and physical affordances, Networked Playscapes take the telepresent quality of imaginative play to make congruous use of physical computing embedded in architectural constructs and nature itself.
Digital or physical, play is an act of creation and appropriation, a respite in a world geared towards consumption, efficiency and technological determinism. Play is something more than children's fun and playgrounds are more than places for play - physicality, materiality, and commonality, strengthen our experience of the real in the realms of perception, experience, cultural and social interaction. Play is better served when grounded in material form and serves us better when it is free, shared and happens in the public space.
This research project proposes that the advantages of networked play need not be exclusive to the indoors and that playgrounds today may need no real estate, and explores ways in which we can reintroduce play as a tool for integration in the cities-to-be by designing grounds-up, locally informed, networked, hybrid playscapes.
Drawing from research in play, cognitive development, ubiquitous computing, architecture, telepresence, and urban planning, it posits the redesign of playgrounds into Networked Playscapes: grounded in the public space, they take existing urban affordances and add largely invisible technological underpinnings to support networked play.
Space informs play, play informs space. Designed with a broad definition of play in mind, Networked Playscapes provide infrastructure for connection at different scales while centering on ludic interaction across social and geographic divisions. Driven by local idiosyncrasies and physical affordances, Networked Playscapes take the telepresent quality of imaginative play to make congruous use of physical computing embedded in architectural constructs and nature itself.