Children are particularly fond of haunting any site where things are being visibly worked upon. They are irresistibly drawn by the detritus generated by building, gardening, housework, tailoring, or carpentry. In waste products they recognize the face that the world of things turns directly and solely to them. In using these things, they do not so much imitate the world of adults as bring together, in the artifact produced in play, materials of widely differing kinds in a new, intuitive relationship.
Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street: “Construction Site”

Check out this bizarre/wonderful collection of slightly ramshackle and…unique…Russian playground equipment.

I’m not quite sure what that image has to do with that quote, besides the fact that it lept to mind when I browsed those pictures.

The sculpture is like a high-school heavy-metal doodle, a primal twisting up of stuff. I guess I believe these playgrounds do capture something of that ‘face’ of the ‘world of things’ that I so enjoy revisiting through the eyes of my daughter. So…uncomplicated. Inviting. And frightening.

via ze digg