Beijing Playscape Community Center
What is architecture and what is engineering? Is architecture something that reifies aesthetics where engineering does not? If that were the case, this would be an entirely engineered structure. It's driven by determinist developmental psychology and serves that precise purpose for social engineering. Imagining oneself as a child moving about the space, and then growing up and having memories of the space; one can't help but think how these children would become engineers, not theorists; psychologists, not artists.
Creativity is a wholly subjective term whose quantitative value cannot be defined and whose qualitative value demands lack of definition, for otherwise it would be mundane and defined, and thus not creative. The creativity claimed to be fomented by the designers of this urban landscape is that creativity as understood by the designers, by psychologists, maybe by architects, definitely by engineers. The steep slopes with forgiving surfaces intended for "maybe" being scalable by tiny ambitious legs encourages trial and error, a freedom for experimentation, whilst teaching lessons on failures. But it does so in a socially controlled environment. The surfaces are forgiving. The slopes are not walls. The visually confining pipes are curved -- a comparative rarity in urban corridors -- and lead to open grates, not dead ends, where other children might be waiting to teach harsh social lessons. Certainly, no one should be expected to experience such backward and outdated childhood experiences simply because some of us older individuals did, but at what point do we draw the line between cosseting children into manufactured experiences that do not replicate adult life versus meaningfully mediated experiences between adult life and the extreme protection of uterine dependence? Surely this is somewhere between cosseting and meaningfully mediated. In that there is some hope. It's not a tour de force of "architecture" and its engineering claims, because they are social, are plausibly dubious.
But it is not a bad piece of architecture or engineering. It is also not a great piece of architecture or engineering. Indeed, the one aspect in which this structure excels is its mediocrity. Now don't take the term mediocrity for its intense derogatory fog that our modern terminology has unrighteously placed on that word. Mediocrity is also the ability to be a moderate in a time of great extremes. This structure could have been MUCH brighter. It could have been deafening, blinding. It could have been more deuce, sweeter, prettier, saccharine to the point of decadence. Shapes could have been sharper. Curves could have been curvier. This structure does not shout. It may speak to adults a mendacious social conceit, but to children, it is simply a fun place to play. It does its job. In fact in that sense of mediocrity, it is a superbly Chinese expression. It does the work asked of it and no more. It's creativity is sanctioned creativity.
That might sound insidious to western ears. But western ears have also grown accustomed in the last few decades to a cacophony of individualism in our society that has fomented narcissicist tyrants. Again, extremism drives the problems that this structure attempts to solve (unfortunately with mediocrity). To say it is a very Chinese expression is also to remind us that the people of China, not the government that claims to speak for the people, mediate their lives between their strict regime and the necessity of freedoms required to live a moderate life of some measure of significance. Chinese lives are mediocre. Western lives are often not (especially American lives). And it's certainly debatable about which of those might be preferable (neither gets my vote). It's an interesting question we should all ask ourselves about where we find ourselves needing to be between the drivers and impetuses of our lives versus our own personal philosophies and individual will.
And so in that sense, while I still might maintain that this is largely an engineering structure, it holds architectural merit. As always, it doesn't hold merit for the reasons intended by the creator. Such is the nature of creativity. The creators create. Society interprets. The interpreted architectural merit by this former child, as we all are, is that this structure is not a soaring exemplar of developmental determinism. It's a moderately hopping plausibility of mediocre intentions, and the tension that provides for our minds is enough to jump up and down on, a metaphorical mini-tramp. It's fun. Delight might just be out of reach. But it is fun.
https://www.designboom.com/architecture/waa-warehouse-beijing-experiential-playscape-children-06-05-2021/
#architecture #social-engineering #engineering #mediocrity #creativity
