Play's the thing
Swingsets and slides? So yesterday. Creative new structures set young imaginations free.

By Kathleen Burge
Boston Globe Staff / March 30, 2008

On other city blocks, children play in towering villages of plastic, networks of tunnels and cubes that glow red and yellow and green. At other playgrounds, even the youngest visitors know what is expected of them. They climb up, they walk across, they slide down. And again. And again.

But on this pile of dirt along barren streets where the South End disappears into the Expressway, silver arms of galvanized steel arch and dip and twist. Here, there are no slides or swings. If you glanced over as you drove by, you might think you were gazing at a modern sculpture, something concocted by a tortured artist and his blowtorch.

This is the Dorado, a plaything for school-age children that its manufacturer argues will create a "physically, socially and emotionally valuable experience." Children must learn how to spin around on the asymmetrical bars. City officials hope they will climb and experiment and pretend.

Boston's newest playground, at the corner of Union Park and Albany streets, is not quite finished, so no one yet knows what the children will think. City park officials departed from their standard playground equipment and bought the Dorado - as well as the equally futuristic Asterope and the Spica - from a European company because South End neighbors wanted something more sculptured, less bright than the plastic and painted-metal contraptions at Peters Park, a few blocks away.

Contemporary playgrounds sprouting up in the urban core often bear little resemblance to their ancestors. Brookline's Monmouth Park playground, remodeled a few years ago, also has no swings or seesaws or monkey bars. Instead, its triangular steel frame supports a weaving web, a web nest, and a clatterbridge. The playground, designed by Joanne J. Hiromura of Acton, pays homage to the old firehouse, now serving as an arts center, next door. Hiromura rescued a fire hydrant, hoses, instrument panels and steering wheels from the town's salvage yard. She designed bi-level tables, one side geared for toddlers, the other for adults.

"I think playgrounds should be places that everybody likes to go, not just kids," said Hiromura. "They should be places that bring communities together. I would like to see them beautiful places, sculptural places that have something to say about the place, the community, the people."

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