2012: Transforming the Bridge | 12175

Team: Axel Holm

Location: Ames, Iowa

Overview: The importance of play:
As early as the age of five or six years old, children are told about the importance of education, but what about the importance of play? For a child, the imagination is their most powerful tool, and when are they more likely to put that tool to use than when on the playground? The Cleveland Competition on the Detroit-Superior Bridge is the perfect opportunity to create a space for not only children, but also people of all ages, to work and mold their imagination. Imagination provokes fun and fun on the playground is about finding the balance between what is risky and what is safe. What better place to flirt with this balance than one hundred feet over the Cuyahoga River? The Superior provides Cleveland with just that. While finding fun on the jungle gym or on a slide is very important to sculpting a person, the best way to exercise creativity is to inhibit space in which there is no right or wrong way to interact. Let the mind wander and choose what the space is or is not!