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Artist and Structural Engineer Designs "Risky Playground"

There's fun in perceived danger

By Rain Noe - November 30, 2022

in Object Culture

New-Zealand-based Mike Hewson has an unusual blend of skills: He holds degrees in both visual arts and structural engineering, and has a background in "heavy-civil construction," his website reads.

A project of Hewson's recently gained some press, and criticism on social media: Rocks on Wheels, a playground created for the city of Melbourne, has been purposely designed to look like a dangerous environment.

"Rocks on Wheels is a sculpture park playground consisting of 24 large monolithic bluestone builders on domestic-scale furniture dollies," Hewson writes. The pieces are connected by ropes, twisted pieces of metal and in one case, appear to be propped up by nothing more than a stack of HDPE buckets.

The installation drew Tweets like the following, from a local news radio host:

It's worth noting that Hewson isn't a child-hating maniac; the boulders are in fact held in place by unseen steel rods, and though the ground looks like stone, it's in fact "bouncy bluestone (rubber flooring)," he reveals. In an interview with the Guardian, Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp defended Hewson's design and reinforced that it's safe. Furthermore, the installation has reportedly been mobbed by children since it opened this month, and no one has been crushed by a rolling boulder.

Hewson's website explains his motivations:

"[I work] to prove we can in fact do things that are considered untenable in a public setting. Each project aims to catalyse fresh conversation about how the bureaucratic and managerial aspects of power are shaping our public lives, asking if we like that shape or if we'd like to consider other options."

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Dee An

a year ago

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>"Each project aims to catalyse fresh conversation about how the bureaucratic and managerial aspects of power are shaping our public lives,"
There is an episode of 99 % Invisible about the conservatism of children's play areas, due to caution on the part of the local authorities that commission them... they feel that they can't be sued for injury to a child if the play equipment is of a design that has been used before elsewhere.

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- Dee An
  
  Dee An
  
  a year ago
  
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  Sorry for large italicised text above, I wasn't expecting the Core77 Comments section to use rich text, let alone to paste the formatting of the source text.
  
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Max Schumacher

a year ago

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The company I work for did the rope netting on this job! I didn't have any involvement, it was just our engineer on this one. Took a huge amount of work to get those distances correct, the fabrication time for how little ropes there are was huge.

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Eric Ludlum

a year ago

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... DJ spinning on Ron Arad's record player at the opening after-party.

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