Edited by Gabriela Burkhalter

From the 1950s—1980s, the open-air playground was a social laboratory. Innovative, wacky, educational, and exciting playground designs emerged in European and American cities, as well as elsewhere around the world. Artists, landscape designers, architects, and activists sought to provide children with the best possible place to play, while also reimagining cities and communities. First published in 2018, this expanded new edition of The Playground Project brings back the wealth of ideas of that period to inspire us today. It offers previously unpublished images, numerous new portraits, especially of female protagonists of the time, and findings from the latest research on playground design. An incisive introductory essay places the playground at the intersections of education, architecture, urban politics, design history, and leisure policy. A detailed focus is placed on the forgotten history of playgrounds in the former GDR. Moreover, young researchers explore the culture of memory surrounding the Shek Lei Playground, Hong Kong, and the role that playgrounds played in the process of state-building in Mexico.