De-Architecture: Adventure Play, is an ongoing installation of a network of modular structures made from 100% reclaimed clear Plexiglas and other found objects. This piece asks the question: Are we able to see beyond the narrowing aspects of the dissociative patterns of the dominant human reflection that is the urban infrastructure into a “clearer” vision of mutualism and symbiosis with non-human beings in which we share this land? Simultaneously, the use of recycled plastic echoes failed systems of modernism and the “throw away” culture in which we live. This work is prepared in sections and can be broken down and rearranged many times over much like a set of child’s building blocks; a defiance of permanence and an embrace of shifting paradigms. These components can be clustered together or spread apart as a way to reconfigure or activate any type of indoor or outdoor installation space. The surfaces of the acrylic retain scratches and other debris that work to reflect color and light as much as layers of time. Other materials include handmade miniature clay bricks, miniature trash & miniature houses along with saw dust, clay dust, multicolored thread, paper cones, and other found objects. Some areas are filled with several different colored pigments which resemble geologic cross sections which can be visible, for example, when sections of mountains are cut for road access or during archaeological digs.
Inspired by the post-war Adventure Playgrounds which were built by groups of children 15yrs or younger. In the wake of World War II there remained defunct & abandoned military debris which soon became the curiosity of neighboring youth. The appropriation of these sites by children was seen as a remedy of reform for both the devastation of the land and in providing a younger generation with the opportunity for creative play that would offer a drawing board for a restructuring of society. “Construction” at these sites was never aided or “schooled” by an adult. In the book An Architecture of Play Nils Norman calls the Adventure Playgrounds “radical models of alternative public space” and are examples of [a] “Non-Plan.” Similarly, De-Architecture was built in a series of intuitive iterations rather than with any kind of blueprint which also subverts the singular power of an academically trained architect who builds our fixed visual environments.
