Word: playground
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...sculptural face of a modern city playground rarely gets more monumental than a jungle gym. Its rectilinear ziggurat of steel lattice is a joy toy for kids, and a spatial bore. But then, who considers a playground worthy of a sculptor's talents? At least, New York city's housing authority did, and let Costantino Nivola, 53, see how he could improve on the blight of monkey bars, slides, and swings that make play grounds across the nation look like a titanic display of naked plumbing...
...playground, he felt, "was more challenging." Wandering recently through the results of his commission, on a 100-ft. by 200-ft. lot between Manhattan's West 90th and 91st Streets, bordered by a new, mediocre low-income housing project and a high-income boys' school, Nivola said, "There is a desolation and barrenness to these buildings. I wanted to relieve that, to introduce a friendly atmosphere in plastic form...
Nivola cut costs to $30,000 by using cast concrete, sometimes in a giant sandbox. A huge slab relief dominates the playground entrance. Two 8-ft.-tall diamond-shaped fountains gurgle water through faceted gutters, and an 80-ft.-long stucco mural wall borders the childrens' plaza. The principal delight is a circus of 18 cast-stone horsies, mixed with marble dust to sparkle in three colors. They are indestructible mounts for the most tantrumy tot. A final touch is a hulking, 7-ft.-high abstract human figure, a sort of guardian nanny to children romping there...
...tenth grade last November. Campbell wanted to be a carpenter, "but 1 wasn't learning nothing, no how," and no one urged him to stay on. Nowadays, he sleeps until noon, plays cards and records with his buddies until 3 p.m., then ambles over to a neighborhood school playground for a game of basketball or football. Campbell hopes to get a job soon, delivering telephone books at $11.80 a day. "That's good bread," he says...
...some 200. Nor for that matter is a lady engineer or banker. In Rio, Lotta Macedo Scares, 54, a member of one of Brazil's oldest families, spends her days in baggy blue jeans and checkered shirt as a construction executive, bossing a $700,000 park-and-playground project bordering Guanabara Bay. Her compatriot, Sandra Cavalcanti, a Sorbonne-educated linguist, is organizing the National Housing Bank and has plans to finance several million private homes over the next 20 years. "Within three years," she vows, "the National Housing Bank will be more powerful than the Bank of Brazil...