n 1947, the architect Aldo van Eyck built his first playground in Amsterdam, on the Bertelmanplein. Many hundreds more followed, in a spatial experiment that has (positively) marked the childhood of an entire generation. Though largely disappeared, defunct and forgotten today, these playgrounds represent one of the most emblematic of architectural interventions in a pivotal time: the shift from the top down organization of space by modernist functionalist architects, towards a bottom up architecture that literally aimed to give space to the imagination.
Immediately after the Second World War, Dutch cities were in a state of dereliction. The housing stock was falling dramatically short in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Combined with a dysfunctional infrastructure, it presented planners with the situation of an outright emergency. On top of that, this ravaged urban context was soon to be confronted with the birth peak of the postwar baby boom, whereas almost no space for children was available, neither inside nor outside the house. At that time, some playgrounds existed in the city, but almost all of them were of a private nature and based on membership of the fortunate few. Van Eyck’s playgrounds, initially build on temporarily unused plots of land, can be seen as an emergency measure, but they had a significance far beyond that of a creative solution in a time of need.