The Rockwell Group’s Imagination Playground has transformed child’s play. The foam blocks, in various mix-and-match shapes, allow for child-directed, open-ended play, their uniform blue ensuring that there is no wrong way to build a slide, a fortress or a robot. Since debuting a few years ago, the concept has been installed in 700 locations. It has had its biggest moment at the Play.Work.Build exhibition (on until 2014 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.), which traces the history of interactive architectural toys to the present day. In one section, kids studiously stack small sections into architectural models, and in another they let their imaginations run wild by arranging larger modules into a fun-filled wonderland.
Swarms Pavilion in Kwangju, South Korea, by NADAAA; and Imagination Playground, an exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., by Rockwell Group.
