The Brooklyn Paper: ‘Hippie’ dream at Brooklyn Bridge ‘Park’
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‘Hippie’ dream at Brooklyn Bridge ‘Park’

By Ariella Cohen
The Brooklyn Paper
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

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Designers of Brooklyn Bridge Park have called in some “old German hippies” to design what could be the city’s most avant-garde playground.

Designer Matthew Urbanski said his team — which he really did describe as “a bunch of old German hippies” — would design a playground in the state’s $130-million condo-and-open space project that would be truly revolutionary.

“Nothing in this playground will come out of a box,” Urbanski said at a briefing last week in the offices of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, which is designing the open space within the condo-and-recreation project on the Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO waterfront.

“This will be a one-of-a-kind playground.”

The kids’ romper room will be constructed at the foot of Atlantic Avenue, at the southern entrance of the project.

And judging from the number of sophisticated strollers and high-minded tyke shops on the avenue, the location fits.

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“There are a lot of kids here and a lot of them, mine included, would love an esoteric playground,” said Fulton Ferry dad Michael Rock, who attended a presentation at Urbanski’s office last week.

“I’m personally all for German hippies,” he added.

Urbanski described the “one-of-a-kind” playground as similar to the Teardrop Park jungle gym his firm built in Battery Park City (see photo at left), but larger and “wackier.”

But while Urbanski imagines a brave new world of play, he said the attractions wouldn’t be too daunting for tykes accustomed to stodgier playgrounds.

“There could be malleable play ingredients like sand,” he said, using language that sounded conspicuously like he was planning a large sand box.

He said that planners are also considering large foam building blocks, playhouses made of Black Locust wood and winding slides.

Squibb Park, a playground at the foot of Middagh Street, would also be renovated as part of the park plan.

©2007 Community Newspaper Group

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