Notes on Play - 2

Connected to Earlier Post

Cultures of play: A new book looks at how children play in the city
published in Hindustan Times, 24 March 2025

Link: https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/mumbai-news/cultures-of-play-a-new-book-looks-at-how-children-play-in-the-city-101742756856410.html

includes my essay:

Locating Play Across the Inside / Outside
Case of Mumbai apartments from 1970-2020
Anuj Daga

abstract:

This paper aims to trace the evolution in the cultures of play-spaces for children within the changing apartment living configurations of the middle class within the city of Mumbai over the last fifty years. The contention of the paper is to bring out the dialectic relationship between the forms of spaces and spaces of play that emerge in the densifying suburban residential neighbourhoods of Mumbai. In order to scope this study, I focus on three stages in typological forms of apartment configurations that have evolved in the city over 1970-2020, and the allied neighbourhood provisions to compensate for playspaces, that primarily come to characterise suburban living in Mumbai. These evolutions are reflective of the social, economic and political forces that shape urban development, and in effect the infrastructure of play as inscribed in the city.

Waterfront Clubhouse, Abin Chaudhuri, Bansberia, West Bengal

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The first sight of the building is an elevated framed pavilion.

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This elevated space is accessed by a grand stairway that doubles up as an amphitheatre.

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An open cage holds a rather free space within the frame.

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The outline of the cage is recessed into the open frame, creating access to a balcony behind, that overlooks the court below.

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One side of the open frame sees the football ground.

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The other side of the cage gives a view of the pond at the back side.

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A small community auditorium is hidden behind the landscape on the lower level.

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As one turn around, the simiple composition of two rotated rectangular volumes placed over each other is revealed.

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The services are tucked behind neatly out of direct sight of the viewer.

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The projecting triangular corner of the lower rectangle becomes the balcony above...

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...whereas that of the upper rectangle shades the space as a chhaja below.

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The two volumes talk to each other through their transparency.

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and the hidden and revealed spaces.

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Dhanbad / Jharia 2025

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West Lake, Hangzhou

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