For Youngsters, Leaps and Boundaries
New York Times
March 16, 2008
BYLINE: By KATHRYN SHATTUCK

SUBTLE and earthy, in hues of green, brown and gray, the West 110th Street Playground at the north end of Central Park has little of the overt cheer associated with children's spaces. Four adjoining circular areas, echoing the curve of the boulders jutting up beyond its south side and the airiness of the ferns dotting the terrain, offer sparse, space-agey climbing and spinning equipment with movable parts that wobble and sway, threatening to send a child tumbling. Beneath it all, springy rubber matting undulates like a grassy knoll.

"The intention is to fall," said Marta Gutman, an associate professor of architectural history at City College, surveying the playground on a recent morning. "You don't want to make the environment so safe that it's not challenging."

What? Get out the lawyer's number.

The ever-shifting perspective on what constitutes the ideal environment for children is at the heart of "Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material Culture of Children," a new book from Rutgers University Press edited by Ms. Gutman and Ning de Coninck-Smith, an associate professor in the department of educational sociology at the School of Education-Aarhus University.

A compilation of essays, the book traces the history of a veritable toy box of specialized architecture (schools, hospitals, playgrounds, houses) and objects (cellphones, snowboards, the McDonald's Happy Meal) that have molded the landscape of children's private lives.

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