Aldo van Eyck: The Playgrounds and the City. (Swings and Roundabouts).

Edited by Liane Lefaivre and Ingeborg de Roode. Roterdam: NAi (in co-operation with Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam). 2002. [euro]29

Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999) was one of those members of CIAM who detached themselves to form Team 10, advocating an approach to urban design that was incremental rather than all-embracing, and 'ground-up' rather than 'top-down'. This handsomely illustrated book accompanies this year's exhibition in Amsterdam 'Design for Children', celebrating van Eyck's achievement in having designed 700 playgrounds in Amsterdam since 1947, according to his own guess. The authors claim that his approach was followed all over the Netherlands, so that 'Aldo van Eyck has changed the Dutch cityscape to a much higher degree than he ever knew'.

He was employed in the Amsterdam public works department from 1946 on, by the city planner Cor van Eestcren, a survivor from the uncompromising days of the Modern Movement, but a man who gave great importance to play, stressing the importance of play spaces as 'ephemeral and evolving rather than as fixed and static'. Rudi Fuchs, who at the age of nine found van Eyck's playgrounds wonderful, explains how their simplicity (rectangular and round frames for climbing, a sandpit and a series of concrete blocks for jumping along) provided objects which were nothing in themselves 'but which have an open function and therefore stimulate a child's imagination'.

Hannie van Eyck, the architect's widow, observes that today, parents want real animals or objects that look like animals. 'If that's what you want, you'd better go to the funfair. Today's objects encourage passive play.' Some playgrounds survive to this day, but many were all too ephemeral, and for this she blames the irresistible demand for parking space. 'The children have gone and the cars have taken their place.'