Noguchi Playground

Playscapes
Excellent

Noguchi Playground

Site overview

The Noguchi Playscape, located near the 12th Street Gate, was designed by world-renowned artist and sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904 - 1988), under the aegis of the High Museum and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Completed in 1976, Playscapes is the only Noguchi-designed playground completed in his lifetime. Noguchi playgrounds are aspects of what he called "the sculpture of spaces", intended to make sculpture a useful part of everyday life. Piedmont Park’s Playscapes familiarizes children with shapes, colors and textures. (Piedmont Park Conservancy website)

Primary classification

Recreation (REC)

Secondary classification

Landscape (LND)

Terms of protection

Jon Buono

Author(s)

Jon Buono | | 2006

How to Visit

Open to the public

Location

12th Street Gate, Piedmont Park
Atlanta, GA, 30361

Country

US
More visitation information

Designer(s)

Other designers

Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles in 1904, and died in New York City in 1988. He attended high school in Indiana, and his experience in the American Midwest was central to his artistic vision. Educated as an artist in New York City, Noguchi developed friendships with such figures as R. Buckminster Fuller and Martha Graham, and he embraced the social and political ideals of New York artists of the 1930s. As an important sculptor of the New York School he rose to prominence during the 1940s, and his base of operations remained New York City throughout his life. In 1961 Noguchi moved his home and studio across the East River from Manhattan to Long Island City, and here he established the Noguchi Museum in 1985. In addition to his work in New York, Isamu Noguchi created landscape projects and public sculpture throughout the United States.

Related chapter

Georgia

Commission

1975

Completion

1976

Commission / Completion details

1975/1976

Current Use

Public playground

Current Condition

Fair

General Description

Inside a low undulating wall that provides visual and aural protection from the surrounding streets, Noguchi installed a group of brightly colored, rugged sculptural elements. The structures include swings, slides, cubes, a low mound and several objects for climbing. All of the elements were oversized and painted in bright colors to emphasize their sculptural presence. According to the artist, the relationships among the different elements in Playscapes refer to relationships among elements in ancient environments of leisure.

Original Physical Context

The creation of playgrounds and play sculpture was an important part of Isamu Noguchi's attempt to make sculpture useful in everyday life. Noguchi designed his first pieces of play equipment in 1939 for Ala Moana Park in Hawaii, but these were not constructed. When Noguchi designed Playscapes (1975-76) in Atlanta's Piedmont Park, the only Noguchi playground to be completed in his lifetime, he included a modified version of the swing from his Hawaiian proposal along with new play objects. In 1968 Octetra -- a pre-cast, modular play sculpture over and through which children climb -- was installed outside the cathedral in Spoleto, Italy and in Kodomo No Kuni park outside of Tokyo. Noguchi continued to design new play sculptures, some of which have been installed in his last playground project, Moere Numa Park in Sapporo, Japan.

Cultural & Aesthetic

Along with his gardens and other landscape projects, the playgrounds of Isamu Noguchi are aspects of what he called \"the sculpture of spaces

Historical

whose goal is to make sculpture a useful part of everyday life. "

General Assessment

Playscapes realized designs for playground equipment that Noguchi had developed throughout his career.