Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Playing is an essential part of being human. Our drive to play comes before the complex trappings of the modern world. It’s primordial. In his 1938 book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, cultural historian Johan Huizinga writes “you can deny seriousness, but not play”.In the world of architecture, replete with briefs, budgets and building regulations, there’s not always the freedom to have fun. But limitations can set an inspiring backdrop for play. Like the rules of a game, they can nurture improvisation and creativity, challenging architects to find a shape for their ideas that fits a project’s unique conditions. When orthodoxies and expectations are toyed with, the result is joyfully unexpected. Forty years ago, Dutch architect Piet Blom applied this methodology to his now famous kubuswoningen, cube houses, in Rotterdam. Tilting towards the ground, and clad in yellow panels, they resemble a handful of rolling dice and fit together like a modular puzzle. This arrangement allows for high-density housing with plenty of communal space at ground level. This is play with purpose. The approach continues to inspire architects today. “We prefer to think of architecture as the art of the possible,” says Sofia von Ellrichshausen, who runs the Chilean practice Pezo von Ellrichshausen with Mauricio Pezo. Their project Casa Bear, currently under construction after more than eight years of planning, is a large ranch just outside Aspen, Colorado. Its main building is a cross-shaped structure built using layers of reinforced concrete and, in reference to the mountain ranch aesthetic, lined with red wood. Though it looks austere and uncompromising from the outside, it is built to exist in concert with the landscape.Instead of levelling the site, they worked its quirks into their plans. A large boulder, for example, is accommodated by a circular void in the building. Details like this turn the project into an interplay between architect and landscape — working around it becomes a game. The concave walls of the rooms and corridors around the void inject a sense of playfulness into the house.The duo are familiar with the relationship between form and fun. Their own home at the foot of the Andes, Casa Luna, contains many similar details. Take the roof, accessible via a concrete column that offers two routes. You can choose to climb up on the inside — quickly taking a few tall steps without admiring the view — or the outside, a slower, meandering route that lets you enjoy the surroundings. Brussels-based practice OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen also had fun with Tondo, a bridge connecting two Belgian government buildings facing each other across the street. They addressed the 90cm height discrepancy between the first-floor entrances by creating a ring-shaped structure. The outside wall of the ring is polished-to-a-shine mirror, while the inside wall is glass. This novel form is both visually striking and softens the incline, making it wheelchair accessible, and provides two crossings. David Van Severen tells me that he prefers it when things “come together slightly awkwardly, but in a good way. It needs that tension.” Where’s the fun otherwise?Play clearly works best when balanced with practicality. “You can’t just be frivolous and completely absurd, but what would the world be if we didn’t have pleasure or joy in our architecture?” asks Michael Meredith, who runs New York-based studio MOS with Hilary Sample. They are currently working on a public-housing project in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, comprising 38 towers on the edge of a ravine. Poking out of the treetops in an irregular pattern, each finishing at a different height and with its own configuration of windows, they look like a mob of red-brick meerkats.The towers’ varying forms are a reaction not only to the terrain but also to the unique needs and desires of each inhabitant. Using what Meredith calls “an insane amount of spreadsheets”, they surveyed the ages, genders, family ties and particular physical requirements of the future residents. Each dwelling is bespoke. On the website, they call this process “empathy via Excel”. Meredith says that “it’s like this puzzle, a game”. You can’t just be frivolous and completely absurd, but what would the world be if we didn’t have pleasure or joy in our architecture?In rural Devon, Thomas Randall-Page’s Art Barn was made to suit the needs of his father, the sculptor Peter Randall-Page, who wanted to convert a cavernous barn into a light-flooded archive space and studio. The puzzle was to create somewhere to work comfortably within this voluminous, often cold space, without building sunlight-blocking walls. The solution? The winter studio: a room-within-a-room or, as Thomas describes it, “a cork-insulated creature [that] stands on stone hooves”. Standing on wooden stilts and warmed by a small wood burner, it’s an adult pillow fort: a friendly enclave of comfort and warmth in an otherwise uncompromising space. Industrial-scale shutters in cedar and galvanised steel bend and slide — the standout is a horizontally hinged wall that folds down into a temporary balcony. “Architects want to have a reason for everything they do, but there are certain gaps in it. We find pleasure in those gaps,” says Theo de Meyer. Together with Stefanie Everaert, he heads the Ghent-based architectural collective Stand Van Zaken — which translates to “state of play”. They started the project as an outlet for their more experimental and imaginative ideas. They often work with artists; at this year’s Horst Arts and Music festival, they worked with Serban Ionescu on a bar that was both functional and surreal. Some decisions were practical, but many weren’t. Enlisting an artist brought a sense of freedom and fun to the space. Take the chairs; Ionescu was given free rein, so designed colourful, ghostly-looking forms to attach to their architect-designed frames.Like artists, children make excellent partners in playful collaboration. Nimtim is a London-based practice run by Tim O’Callaghan and Nimi Attanayake. Last year, they completed a public square on the Becontree Estate in Dagenham. Parents themselves, they wanted it to be a site for play, but to avoid what O’Callaghan calls “an unenjoyable distinction that suggests that the kids can go here and, if you’re an adult, you just have to sit and watch them”.In workshops with local children, they developed structures for informal and inclusive play. One is a large, angled, stone surface, its perimeter punctuated with blue-painted crank shafts repurposed from the nearby Ford factory. It presents endless unexpected possibilities. “We want to create the opportunity for children to play with things that aren’t formally identified as playground equipment,” explains O’Callaghan.At its best, play is a collaboration, a sort of game. With architecture, each game brings fun and function to the built environment. Far from frivolity, play is an essential (to use Huizinga’s language, undeniable) way of understanding the world around us. And sometimes, it even offers the best solution to a practical problem.Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
