Placed in a sliver of the city in the shadow of skyscrapers or on top of a building, in a portion of the jungle beside a narrow road that runs through it or on the edge of a country town, playgrounds are much more than facilities where sports can be played. They are places for people to meet and exchange with one another, an integral part of a community and local identity, a hub of democratic relations that finds no limits in gender, age, or income.
 

In more recent years, and with the involvment of more and less famous artists, street courts have gone through a phase of extreme trendization, becoming fashionable places of attraction, as happened in Pigalle, where a ramshackle basketball court powered by Nike became a hyper-popular venue on social media. But at the last Biennale we saw also how for decades the basketball court has been an institution in the social life of the rural population in Mexico, far beyond any surge in social sentiment.

Here you will find a collection of projects that we think are important to understand the phenomenon: they are mostly basketball courts, which remains the quintessential “street” sport around the world, from Rucker Park in Harlem down to the otherwise Instagram-friendly little courts scattered among the palm jungles of the Philippine islands.  But there is room for other sports as well, from soccer to tennis to its trendy variant, padel.

A fragment of a concrete basketball court, painted yellow and blue, with basketball hoop, backboard and side seating, inside the Arsenale’s Hall of Arms. This is the Mexican Pavilion at the 18th. International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia: an immediately clear installation that does not imply any intellectualistic afterthought but which, behind its disarming simplicity, turns the international spotlight on a part of Mexico’s social history not devoid of conflict but with a confident look to the future. Read more

Located in the heart of Kamwokya, a poor urban district on the margins of Kampala, Uganda, the playground by Pritzker Prize 2022 winner architect Francis Kéré, is a pocket of public space cut out from a thick urban tissue of dilapidated houses and chaotic alleys. Read more

Located on the debris of a demolished former military building in Chorzów, Poland, Activity Zone takes shape as a multifunctional public park formally detailed by organic modules, as well as by a varied vegetative and color palette. Polish firm SLAS Architekci completed this play space as the first phase of the regeneration and integration of Silesian University into the urban fabric of Chorzów. Read more

Giulio Vesprini realised a new street art work for an abandoned basketball court in Monte Urano, a small town in the Marche region, in Italy. Landscape/Struttura G051 is the third painting project by the Italian street artist and graphic designer on a flat surface. Read more

Pigalle Converse, Ill studio and Nike renewed the Parisian court for the fifth time using purple, blue and mint tones together with large numbers.  The court is located between some of the buildings in the 9th arrondissement, Paris, not so far from Montmartre and Moulin Rouge. Read more

For Mexico, it is a time of great innovation in urban regeneration. In recent years we have seen the emergence of several public spaces that combine architectural quality with low-cost/low-tech solutions. These projects are conceived as urban and civic infrastructures: devices that encourage civic action and the renewal of marginal urban contexts. Read more

“A complete but unfinished space that makes its indeterminateness its strong point”. This is how the Orizzontale studio describes the Prossima Apertura project, a new public square for the Toscanini neighbourhood, a working-class suburban area of Aprilia. Read more

Armed with paintbrushes and around 137 litres of water colours, muralist Katrien Vanderlinden managed to transform an old and dull basket street court into a fully fledged piece of art. Read more

Sports and urban arts come together to create iconic and often representative projects for the inhabitants of suburban areas around the world. Read more