Construction sites are not usually a place to play around, but at the Brooklyn Children's Museum, kids have free reign to climb on, slide down, and explore a maze of scaffolding. New York City-based artists Yeju Choi and Chat Travieso transformed a common industrial element of our city streets into an imaginative playground for kids.
Titled In the Works, the new interactive installation is a colorful two-story play structure designed for children aged two and up. The playground gives kids access to an urban space that is ubiquitous yet off-limits. "While all the individual features (slide, nets, climbing wall, multiple platforms, etc.) are exciting, it’s the sectional moments that we enjoy the most," Yeju and Chat told Untapped New York, "There’s something magical about lounging on the second-floor net and watching someone sway on the hammock below."
As tiny explorers crawl through passageways, navigate through crisscrossed bars and orange netting, and discover hidden nooks, they get an inside perspective on how their city is built while developing spatial awareness and exercising creativity.
"We’re drawn to the idea of reimagining everyday materials, spaces, and systems to create something unexpected," Yeju and Chat told Untapped New York, "For this project, working with the systems scaffold was particularly interesting—it felt like using a life-sized LEGO set. The challenge, of course, was transforming something industrial into something both inviting and safe for children."
Scaffolding and sidewalk sheds are a pervasive part of the urban landscape. As of July 2023, there were nearly 400 miles of sidewalk sheds in the city, with almost 4,000 sheds in Manhattan alone. These sheds typically stay up for an average of 475 days, but as you may know from walking around the city, many stay up for much longer. The longest-standing sidewalk shed was up for more than 15 years!
Programs planned during the installation invite visitors to further explore and engage with this inescapable element of our built environment. On December 21 and 22—the museum's 125th birthday weekend—families can join a poster-making workshop and leave a personal touch on the installation (just as wild postings appear on real scaffolding). There will also be a structural building workshop and visioning workshops about how families can repurpose scaffolding. With these programs and interactions, the installation will change and evolve over the next six months.
On opening day, November 23rd, Yeju and Chat will be on-site at Brooklyn Children’s Museum to interact with families and share insights into their artistic process. Visitors can also participate in a scavenger hunt!
"We hope it inspires children to see the built environment through a lens of wonder and possibility," say the artists, "After exploring this installation, they might begin to imagine new ways to adapt and transform their surroundings outside the museum. We would like to reinforce the idea that play isn’t confined to traditional playgrounds—it can happen anywhere. This installation is a small step toward envisioning a city where various elements are designed to invite interaction and creativity."
