Playgrounds of modern Mexico
Who does not keep among their memories, the figure of a concrete animal, of those who splashed the parks with its cheerful abstraction? The playgrounds in modern Mexico were part of architectural and artistic projects motivated by the research and consideration of its users, children, and materialized the paradigmatic optimism that characterized the Modern Movement for designing a better society since its inception. This book tells a special story, reconstructed from below, that is, from the look that childhood brings to memory, and that leads us to imagine another possible world, as we will see below.
The period known as the Modern Movement in Mexico, can be seen as a puzzle whose different pieces have been studied in recent years. There are some well-known ones, such as those that correspond to the great architects, the works of the expanding Mexican state, or the movement of plastic integration. And others, less revised, that help to imagine this period with all its color. It is the case of public space and in particular, the design of children's urban furniture whose study is approached by Aldo Solano Rojas in his most recent publication, Playgrounds del México Moderno.
As in one of the urban parks mentioned, the author puts to play different topics that intersect on several levels and give us the general panorama in which these playgrounds evolved: the vision of the State as an agent that set the pace of Mexican modernity; the post-revolutionary ideological change he saw in play and sports fulfilling one of his promises; government public programmes that sought to homogenize the country's infrastructure; and the new institutions such as the IMSS, the SEP, the National Institute of Child Protection or the National Institute of Sport, whose objective was to give the middle and lower urban classes a healthy and athletic life.
Collaborations between artists and architects is another topic widely addressed and stems from an apparent professional vacuum: the absence of industrial designers, whose presence in our country would loom in the mid-1960s. However, there is talk of an interesting crossroads between these two professions, because, "in the gaming apparatus we can identify the plastic and sculptural explorations of the architects, as well as the experimentation with architectural forms by artists."
As in a scrapbook, we went from chapter to chapter, from the origins of children's areas in the late nineteenth century, to the idea of playgrounds in modern Mexico, and then jump to concrete examples such as the parks and gardens designed by Luis Barragán , Fernando González Gortázar, and also visit those playgrounds inserted in housing units, for example, the one located in the nursery of the IMSS within the Miguel Alemán Urban Center, designed by Mario Pani, and with murals of Carlos Mérida whose animal theme complemented the festive atmosphere of the site. A separate mention deserves the famous "Rocket of Tlatelolco", located in the well-known Nonoalco-Tlatelolco Habitat Complex (also designed by Pani, together with Ricardo de Robina among others) and whose height posed a danger, so it was removed in the middle 1970s.
Another interesting point of the book is the idea of a historiography of children's spaces. The author speaks of a section of the population that has not been taken into account by either history or urban design—because of its passing status—and which is nevertheless part of the cities. "Its existence is barely traceable" as the public space is designed on an "adult" scale. Cities, and their managers, have historically ignored the needs of a large part of the small population.
This book, with a nostalgic look, invites us to remember a part of our childhood related to public space. Parks and gardens were part of our notion of the city, a guarded and safe, with spaces for everyone, and everyone. At the same time it makes us reflect on children's furniture, as a valuable and useful element for urban design, and in a plane related to history and its study, presents us with a new ground where we can freely imagine and play.
Solano Rojas, Aldo, Playgrounds of Modern Mexico, Mexico, Júmex Foundation / Cubo Blanco, 2018.