Three desires: desires for exploration, body-play and a dynamic environment, can all work together to help us achieve a play-based escape through the satisfaction of each. Ten strategies can aid in satisfying these desires: nature, complexity, the dynamic, loose-parts theory, scale, the primitive, along a path, mystery, risk, and an unmonitored feel. Using the previously investigated case studies, as well as accumulated research, the following will describe how each of the ten strategies relates to our intrinsic desires.
Due to nature’s importance, each section will begin first with a focus on how nature satisfies each desire, followed by the factors which propose ways that we may attempt to learn through nature by evoking similar qualities through the artificial.
1-Desires for Exploration
Exploration is an initial step in, and required during, the process of play. It often leads to the other steps in this process. As humans, we are intrinsically curious; we seek to understand the world around us. This curiosity sparks our desires for exploration. Exploration is a form of information gathering. Engaging in explorations help us to become more familiar with our environments, and feel more relaxed. We gain knowledge and understanding which we can use to adapt to situations. Also, once we gain the acquired information we need, we can then begin to apply it through practicing creativity.
The context for a play-based escape must include: familiarity, free choice, minimal supervised intrusion, and be stress-free.1 Explorations increase our familiarity and decrease our stress; we also feel freer to engage in it if we do not feel supervised, and feel free to investigate as we choose.
Nature
Exploratory desires relate largely to Hildebrand’s pairing of enticement and peril2. Nature is able to provide both of these characteristics. Again, imagine a mountain hike and note how we experience the element of peril. We feel it when we become lost, as well as when we are caught in a storm. We are also enticed. The challenges, mystery, beauty, and the experience of nature work towards creating the experience of this element. From a young age, when a child goes into the wilderness to play, often they build hide-outs, climb tall trees, balance on fallen ones, or even walk over a frozen slough tempting the ice to crack. They begin to organize found spaces as well as find challenging and risky adventures that provide hours, and perhaps even years of enjoyment. Nature provides countless opportunities for these risks and adventures.
Mystery
We can attempt to artificially create the sense of mystery. Mystery sparks our curiosity and our exploration soon follows. Mystery often does this through anticipation; anticipation is the first of Eberle’s steps during the process of play.3 Creating anticipation using architectural tactics, we can construct walls that curve out of sight, views that are revealed and then hidden again, and peek-a-boo upper levels or feature areas that give a small taste of what you might see next. These tactics are largely applied by numerous architects because they are successful in creating appeal for the spaces and piquing our curiosity.
Mystery can also be created through the careful use of the taboo. We can create spaces which are not allowed to be occupied; alternatively we can create spaces which were previously not able to be occupied and now give leave to opportunity.
Ruins appear incomplete, and the mystery of what could have once been is alluring and creates wonder. The seemingly random and haphazard incompleteness coupled with an overgrowth of nature give ruins their mysterious qualities. Some built portions are missing, some are submerged beneath water or soil, and other portions are hidden from view or covered with vegetation. As designers we can attempt to mimic ruins in order to ignite exploration, and therefore a play-based escape.
Risk
As previously mentioned, an important step in the process of play is that of anticipation, and that it also involves a small amount of risk. Risk is closely tied to mystery in this way. Risk lies between safety and danger. If there is too much safety an individual will begin to feel bored, if there is too much danger an individual will become stressed and be unable to participate in a play-based escape. It is important, for a designer, to recognize an appropriate balance between the two extremes.
Adventures are often exciting ventures that involve an element of risk as well as an uncertain outcome; in this way they can be considered another type of play-based escape. It is helpful to think of an adventure when designing to encourage exploration, as this leads to a play-based escape. For example, a designed water-feature that has stepping stones strategically located through it can provide an enticing level of risk, and encourage a visitor to explore and take on a mini-adventure.
As described by Hildebrand, overhanging balconies, heights, and elevated walkways are also ways to evoke risk or peril.4
Unmonitored Feel
The design should attempt to have an unmonitored feel. This relates to one of the elements of the context in which a play-based escape can occur, that of minimal supervised intrusion. It also relates to the element of refuge. When we play we are not actively searching for food or protecting ourselves, and therefore are left un-alert and unprotected, preferring to play in the safety of refuge. It also relates to risk or peril due to the consequences of being caught, whether it be embarrassment or scorn. As a child I certainly did not play the same when my parents were watching. I was much more adventurous and experimental when they were not looking, perhaps dangerously so. The same is true as adults. If no one is around to catch us, we are far more likely to engage in play, as well as try new things that may, or may not work out. I admittedly have been quite creative when home alone with no one to help move furniture, or open jars. We can accomplish an unmonitored feel by the use of screens (possibly trees or bushes), barriers, or a number of other ways to obstruct views so individuals do not feel a fishbowl-effect.
2-Desires for Body-Play
Body-play is our often playful physical and sensory engagement with our environments. Play is a state of mind, and it can be difficult to engage that state of mind at times, especially as adults. Body-play helps us escape; it switches our mindsets. Body-play is the quickest way to become engaged in the play state of mind. It is also something we desire; we desire to move our bodies and to be active.
Nature
Nature is able to subtly initiate body-play. We need only to walk over its uneven ground, or climb over rocks, branches and roots in order to begin to feel the effects. Nature stimulates all our senses. Changes in temperature, sound, light, wind, and precipitation all have an impact on us. Sou Fujimoto’s House before House uses nature to stimulate the senses. To cross from one room to another the inhabitant must cross through nature, thereby feeling the breeze, the drops of rain, and hearing the soft crunch of leaves underfoot as he passes over the haphazard ground.
Scale
Scale is another way to influence body-play. We should create spaces that escape the visually cued regularity of building-code constrained designs. Fujimoto played with scale during the design of his Final Wooden House. Intrigued by the 350x350mm-square profile and its relationship to the human body’s dimensions, he built this small home. The scale of the spaces and the steps lack typical regularity. To move around this home, inhabitants must twist and bend their bodies; the act of doing so engages the brain and facilitates the play-state.
Another way to use scale is to create familiar objects using unusual scales. As an example, think of an abnormally large chair. Since we have become accustomed to the typical size of a chair, when we sit in a chair of a much larger scale it changes how we may sit on it. It also creates a novel experience and new perspectives. It no longer is just a chair; it becomes a new space full of opportunity.
Primitive
We should consider going back to our roots by designing with the primitive in mind. We can create tree-like or cave-like spaces that evoke the prospect and refuge characteristics as well as allowing us to feel like we are residing in a primitive shelter. In this way we climb around that structure, and also enjoy its lack of regularity. Sou Fujimoto’s Final Wooden House and House NA both attempt to mimic nature by use of this idea.
Instead of adding pieces to create a whole, Fujimoto subtracts pieces to create a hole; he calls this hole a cave-like space. Similar to this, is the idea of mimicking ruins. We can carefully manipulate a design so that it appears to be accidentally created. A cave-like space is a space where we create ways in which to occupy it, as opposed to what Fujimoto calls a nest, which is a space we create in order to occupy it in a specific manner.5
Along a Path
We must find ways to overcome the cultural taboos and, because play must be voluntary, we can help initiate the play-state of mind by designing spaces along a path. These are areas of “the in-between”. Areas that people must pass through, such as hallways, passage-ways, paths, lobbies, stairs, windows, and doors, to name a few, are good places to locate areas for body-play. This can include an uneven surface, climbing devices, and even devices that respond when walked over or passed through. In Odenplan, Stockholm, an initiative of Volkswagen, that awards innovations that use fun in order to initiate change6, spurred an innovation that intended to make more people take the stairs as opposed to the escalator. Each of the steps was fitted with sensors that would create a sound when stepped upon, and then made to look and sound like a keyboard. The installation resulted in 66% more people than normal taking the stairs. This not only proves the success of the project, but also proves that human beings do desire to engage in a little body-play.7
3-Desires for a Dynamic Environment
A dynamic environment allows us to engage novelty. We often need a source of inspiration or wonder, something that sparks our interest and lets our mind take flight. A dynamic environment is one that changes. Since exploration comes naturally to us, we soon become familiar with our environments. When this occurs we may develop a way to interact with it, perhaps developing a routine. However, if this environment changes at times, it may alter our perception and give us a fresh base for inspiration and escape. Think of a lounge for example, perhaps it has two couches and a coffee table; you would typically sit at the couch with your cup of tea placed on the coffee table. Now imagine that you came to the same lounge, but someone had turned one couch upside-down, another on its side, and the coffee table overturned. You would soon find a new way to use this space, and inhabit it based on instinct. Body-play and exploration also soon become engaged; your escape has begun.
Nature
Nature is full of qualities that satisfy our desires for a dynamic environment. Nature is always changing. Plants grow or die, the winds and water rustle the leaves and stir the earth, the clouds in the sky continue to morph, the light transitions from morning to night, and from spring till winter, also changing the colours of the landscape. There is always another beauty to behold in the complexity and natural order of nature. At the other end of the spectrum is the artificial, the human formed environments. We need to bring nature into these environments so that we are able to see, touch, smell, and hear it. The Tezukas’ Kindergarten is but one example of this.
Complexity
We can attempt to add complexity to our designs; however, within a static design, once visitors or inhabitants become acclimatized to its complexity it requires more complexity in order to continue to stimulate our curiosity. Complexity can continue to evoke feelings of the sublime, the wonder of novelty. However, we must also use our common sense of what may be regarded as a comfortable level of complexity.
Designing for complexity can be based on numerous themes or combinations: unusual views, novel shapes and forms, sounds, and light are a few examples. Unusual views create new and novel perspectives, abstract shapes and unique forms allow for improvisation, sounds can be filtered, or amplified to create wonder, and light can be manipulated to produce pleasant arrays.
Dynamic
In order to survive the test of time, complexity also needs to be dynamic.
If we are resourceful enough, we can create artificial dynamic spaces. We can create spaces that as they are being used, visited, inhabited, or with time, change. As they change, the process of play takes wing once again. However, care must be taken, as Hildebrand (1999) affirms: complexity without order produces chaos and confusion. Some simple examples of how to accomplish this could be: a reactive push-pull design as in the toy called PinPressions™; a cause-and-effect design, where one act may cause something else to occur, be it a smell, sound, movement, light, or other effect; or by the use of the naturally occurring changes such as the Earth’s movement around the sun, or changing seasons.
Loose-Parts Theory
Another way that designers have tried to accomplish dynamic environments is through the loose-parts theory as described by Cambridge architect, Simon Nicholson. He describes that “In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.”8 His theory has been adopted by numerous play experts, architects, and landscape architects the world round. The “Play on Architecture” exhibit in the Art Gallery of Alberta is one example of this theory being used.
Conclusion
The most successful designs in promoting play will be those that satisfy each of these desires that we have as human beings. Not every characteristic needs to be employed within a single design. There are thousands of possible combinations and applications of these design factors, and a whole world with which to begin applying them to. The next chapter explores one design example which hopes to engender play-based escape.
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