Soft touch Brutalism: artists recreate concrete playgrounds with a spongy modern twist

Long before Carsten Höller brought his helter-skelters to the gallery, a generation of post-war architects were designing Brutalist playgrounds for the children of Britain’s housing estates. These mostly concrete jungle gyms—the antithesis of the indoor soft play area—were consigned to history by the 1970s. But the Royal Institute of British Architects has let the Turner Prize-nominated design collective Assemble and the artist Simon Terrill loose in the archives to recreate fragments from three such playgrounds on a 1:1 scale for its London Architecture Gallery. The free installation opens to the public today, 10 June (until 16 August). Children and safety-conscious adults need not fear; these Brutalist throwbacks are made of softer stuff: reconstituted foam in soothing pastel shades.