La Nave de Intermediae in Matadero Madrid will become an enormous space of play for the children of Madrid starting on April 11. That day its new Intermediae Playground will open, a project that invites artists to create large-format installations for children.
With these Playgrounds, Intermediae Matadero claims the need to dedicate more spaces for children in contemporary cities. Through commissions to international artists to imagine new places to play, Matadero Madrid makes a unique statement for the right to play within cultural institutions as well.
On this occasion, British collective Aberrant Architecture was responsible for creating Landscape for Play, a large installation for free play that will occupy the Intermediae warehouse between April 11 and September 22. Inspired by the language of Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck (1918-99), Landscape for Play invites you to discover all the possibilities of your own movements.
Van Eyck designed and built more than 700 playgrounds, transforming the urban fabric of Dutch cities. His playgrounds were composed of simple geometric elements that favored an imaginative use by its users. For the British architects Aberrant Architecture, it is now a question of proposing to the children of the 21st century a play space that favors autonomous and non-regulated play. The resulting interior landscape is composed of follies, crevices and elevations that make up a fantastic territory to be used freely by families who come to the Intermediae warehouse.
The creation of these Playgrounds was born within the framework of the program Modelos para una ciudad en la que caben lxs niñxs (Models for a city in which children fit) and the experience accumulated by Intermediae in previous projects such as La Madroñera and the array of neighborhood initiatives of Los Madriles childhood edition. All of them investigate how art affects and proposes models of inclusion and coexistence in the city.
The Intermediae Playgrounds are projects that seek to give a new role to children in cultural institutions. The Spanish artist Leonor Serrano Rivas will be responsible for producing the next play space in the fall of 2019.
