Danish invention
The original concept was the idea of landscape architect C.Th. Soerensen, who published in 1931 a little book entitled Policy for Parish and Town Parks (Parkpolitik i Sogn og Koebstad). In this publication Soerensen proposed that playgrounds should be made in which children were allowed to build everything themselves using surplus materials from building sites. He had observed that boys ran around most building sites after hours building huts and caves. C.Th. Soerensen's point was that public areas should be created which could be used for sports or games rather than just as ornamental gardens.
Happy children and teachers
The first of these new building playgrounds went into use in the middle of World War II, in the summer of 1943, in connection with a council estate in the Copenhagen suburb of Emdrup. Later on, building playgrounds spread like wildfire throughout the country. The children loved them, and educators and teachers became more and more enthusiastic about them as well, as principles of education increasingly focused on schoolchildren's creativity and the need to develop their abilities more freely. By the mid-1960s there were as many as 100 estimated building playgrounds in Denmark.
Today some of them have been removed or transformed into 'real' playgrounds but children still play in and build at building playgrounds throughout the country. Coupled with the Folk High School, these building playgrounds represent Denmark's two major independent contributions to world educational theory.
Jeppe Villadsen is a freelance journalist and editor of the magazine KBH.
Children play with rubbish, 1968.