Review: Architecture in Play: Intimations of Modernism in Architectural Toys, by Tamar Zinguer

Abstract

Tamar Zinguer Architecture in Play: Intimations of Modernism in Architectural Toys Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015, 252 pp., 129 illus. $49.50 (cloth), ISBN 9780813937724 The design of objects and spaces for children is a hot topic these days, as evidenced by a spate of recent publications and exhibitions dealing with subjects ranging from school and playground design to summer camps, museums, toys, and games.1 Tamar Zinguer's recent book Architecture in Play: Intimations of Modernism in Architectural Toys finds a place squarely within this trend, at a site of intersection between architectural history and the material cultures of childhood: construction toys. Zinguer's book is not a comprehensive study of construction sets (no Lincoln Logs or Lego here). It focuses on four case studies: Friedrich Froebel's kindergarten Gifts and Occupations (1836); Gustav and Otto Lilienthal's Anchor Stone Building Blocks (1877); Frank Hornby's Meccano (1901) and A. C. Gilbert's Erector Set (1911); and Charles and Ray Eames's Toy (1951) and House of Cards (1952).2 The book's chronological boundaries mark a period of significant changes in thinking about childhood as a distinct field of human experience, and about the importance of play for children's social and intellectual development (also arising at this time was a new commercial and design interest in childhood games and toys). Zinguer surveys shifting theories of play from Friedrich Schiller to Sigmund Freud, John Dewey, Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, and Erik Erikson, making suggestive links between developing ideas about play's utility and the nature of construction toys during this period. The material strata of these toys—wood, stone, metal, and paper—also link them to modernist architectural imperatives: natural form, tectonics, engineering, lightness, and flexibility. However, Architecture in Play is not much concerned with the influence of these toys …