The monograph focuses on an artistic phenomenon in post-war Vienna that has been granted little recognition to date – playground sculptures for children. Artists created these as part of an “art-in-architecture” initiative for a communal housing scheme. The playground sculpture’s advanced shape injected a rare utopian element into the dull architecture of postwar reconstruction.

The publication presents the extensive historical exploration into the typology of the playground sculpture Thorsen has conducted with her specific interweaving of abstract sculpture, architecture and urban planning, aesthetic and society, alongside art and play. Thorsen relies mostly on photographic archival material and places them in relation with international urban planning proposals by Egon Møller-Nielsen, Aldo Van Eyck, or Isamu Noguchi. From these she then makes photographs, collages, paper sculptures, and installations.