Um caso de estudo em Nova Iorque. Com o olhar sobre as obras de M. Paul Friedberg e Richard Dattner

Abstract

The right to childhood plays an important role not only on cities' urban planning, but also in the daily lives of children and citizens. In the 1950s, in New York City, Playgrounds emerged with the same ideologies and concepts as the postwar European recreational spaces, adjusted, however, to a new environment, where architecture and socio-economic costumes were very different. Richard Dattner and M. Paul Friedberg worked on renovating New York's recreational spaces during the same period. Despite having individual works, they shared a link, with the same ideals, in which the child becomes a priority in the spaces' design. Dattner reproduced, for the most part, the European Adventure Playground model, adapting it within a city where, in the past, parks were simply asphalt lots with fences as boundaries. M. Paul Friedberg, on the other hand, followed the concept of Vest-Pocket Playgrounds, in an attempt to rebuild empty lots within the urban fabric, with the aim of reducing undesirable activities associated with these areas (such as, for example, vandalism). This research work uses the book Design for Play, by Richard Dattner, as a starting point for the study of playgrounds with different typologies, methodologies and techniques, thus enabling an in-depth analysis of these works and the impact of their reconstructions on New York city.