BREAKING THE GROUND OF PLAY : A STUDY OF THE PLAYGROUND IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

The playground represented within publications on Singapore’s public housing environment, primarily by the Housing and Development Board, projects an image of play that is seemingly synonymous with the experience of community and quality of life. This image of play veils the intentions and assumptions in the construct of the playground and reinforces its prevalence and continuing production. Examining the grounds of play on which the idea of the playground is formed through specific histories in which ideas of play evolved and were appropriated in urban planning to assume instrumental function in the form of the playground makes obvious the contradictions in its construct. Further, the analysis of the agencies and processes, through which the import of the playground to Singapore is normalised to image community and life, reveal that although the initial intentions that influence the proliferation of the playground is no longer served by its persistence, the assumptions entrenched continue to have effect on the planning of urban space within the public housing estates today. The examination of the playground as a point of contradiction between functional planning and play expands on the reading of urban space within the public housing estates of Singapore and probes at the boundaries of current frameworks within which public space is perceived and planned.