There's no shortage of well-designed playgrounds in the world, but far rarer is the playground built squarely for designers. So London design duo Isabel + Helen decided to make one: a sculptural swing set that pays homage to the Constructivist art movement, even as it allows a couple of designers to scrape the sky with their feet.
Created for this year's London Design Festival, the Constructivist Swing Set is made up brightly colored, geometric shapes, bringing to mind he work of Constructivist graphic designers like Rodchenko or Eli Lissitzky. Two of these shapes, a triangle and a square, are actually swings, which enclose the rider and act as seats. If you've ever been a kid with a friend who pretend their swings were dogfighting airplanes, this looks like an ideal set-up.
Perhaps the most clever aspect is that the swing also functions as a subtle a critique on some of the reductive aspects of Constructivism. To ride the Constructivist Swing Set is, by design, to take a narrower view of the world around you: the swings on the set have been designed to enclose the person sitting on them, limiting their view of the horizon to a slim vertical stripe.. According to Isabel + Helen, the swing is a continuation of a previous project, called the Constructivist Playground, which allowed them to both pay homage to a sometimes oppressive art movement in a liberating and playful way.
If you'd like to take a go on the Constructivist Swing Set, it will be open to the public until the end of the month at the Chelsea College of Arts, as part of their alumni show.
[via Designboom]