CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/28/2016

Isamu Noguchi: Playscapes

Best known as a visionary artist who redefined abstract sculpture in the 1930s, Isamu Noguchi also designed experimental gardens and furniture, lights, ceramics, architecture, and sets for theater and dance. He was also one of the twentieth century's most inventive designers of children's playspaces. All of Noguchi's playground designs—built and unbuilt—are gathered in a truly wonderful new book from RM/Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo. Reproduced here is Ruiko Yoshida's 1961 photograph of Noguchi and child looking at an early model for Riverside Park Playground—an unrealized masterpiece designed in collaboration with architect Louis I. Kahn and the object of five years of resistance from various factions involved in NYC park planning.