Frank Gehry Does Playgrounds

In a city where MBA housewives push thousand-dollar strollers and newborns kick feet clod in designer baby booties, it should come as no surprise that our pampered tots will soon have the chance to mingle at a playground designed by world-renowned architect [Frank Gehry]. On Monday night, Mayor Bloomberg and Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe announced that Gehry will design [his very first playground](http://www.amny.com/entertainment/news/wire/sns-ap-architecture-gehry-playground,0,885793.story), to be erected at [the Battery](http://thebattery.org/) in Lower Manhattan. “It is fitting that the Battery, the birthplace of New York, will be home to another first. Frank Gehry’s newest creation will be a truly innovative play experience for New Yorkers and visitors alike, for the young and the young-at-heart,” Commissioner Benepe told the crowd at the Battery Conservancy’s 12th Annual WaterGazer Gala benefit, where the announcement was made. Only the newest and hippest, it seems, will do.

Gehry, who has spent his career creating complex, post-modern masterpieces dominated by sweeping metallic planes and harshly intersecting geometric shapes, is best known for works like the [Guggenheim Museum] in Bilbao, Spain, LA’s [Walt Disney Concert Theatre](http://wdch.laphil.com/wdch/home.html) and the [Dancing House](http://www.pragueexperience.com/places.asp?PlaceID=651) in Prague. He has also taken on more humble projects, including designing the trophy for the World Cup of Hockey as well as a small food stand attached to his studio in California. The design for this one-acre, $4 million-plus project, which will include a “‘green’ comfort station with a green roof and vegetal walls” (whatever that means), is expected to be unveiled later this year. The playground is part of a larger project to revitalize the park, which includes installing two new organic food kiosks, a bikeway connecting Manhattan’s East and West sides, renovations to Peter Minuet Plaza and the restoration and expansion of historic Castle Clinton.

Photo courtesy of [ctd 2005 on Flickr]