Équipements récréatifs Catalogue - Joe Brown | Page 4

Joe Brown
Inventor of Rope
Play Equipment
He also created the first designs for today’s very popular high rope
gardens. Until long into the 1960s, he attempted but failed to find a
licensee, so instead he implemented individual special projects. Ultimately,
Joe Brown became an instructor in art and taught sculpture until his retire-
ment in 1977. Joseph Brown passed away in 1985 in Philadelphia.
Joseph Brown was born in 1909 as a son of Russian immigrants in Phila-
delphia, United States of America. At the age of 18 he was the recipient
of a football scholarship from Temple University in Philadelphia, where he
studied physical education. Shortly before he was to graduate in 1928, he
left university and became a professional boxer. Following an injury, Joe
discovered he had a weakness for sculpture and devoted more and more
time to the arts. In 1931, Joe Brown returned to Temple University and
completed his studies. After six years as a sculptor, Joe was employed at
Princeton University to train boxers.
Having recognized, that movement through sport and play is important
for the development of young people, Joe Brown turned his attention to
play equipment for the first time in 1950, examples of which he presented
to the general public at the National Recreational Congress in St. Louis in
1954. Many experts believe his designs to have been revolutionary. He
developed what he termed play communities, which drew attention both
for their sculptural character and their play function. Joe Brown is thus also
regarded as a pioneer of modern play equipment culture, having been one
of the very first to define play as preparation for the responsibilities
of adulthood. Over the next few years, he installed a number of prototypes
in Philadelphia and outside the USA, in London and Tokyo. However,
there was no mass production of his designs, since he did not have the
manufacturing capacity nor did he wish to hand everything over to
others. In 1959, Joe Brown published a book called Creative Playgrounds
and Recreation Centers containing the designs of his first spatial rope play
equipment. He derived his play concept for rope play equipment from
a classic boxing ring.
In Germany, it was Conrad Lehmann who further pursued the idea of rope
play equipment and combined his approach with the insights of Frei Otto
at the Institute for Lightweight Structures. Then in the early 1970s, these
designs were developed to the mass production stage using the techni-
cal expertise of the Berliner Seilfabrik. In the more than 40 years during
which the Berliner Seilfabrik worked on the development of rope play
equipment, a large number of new structures were created and many of
them were patented internationally. These spatial structures are normally
based on the 5 Platonic solids, also called regular polyhedrons because the
regular structure means that the tensioning points needed for rope play
equipment are optimally distributed. The rope play equipment originally
invented by Joe Brown remains as popular as ever, and continues to
provide a lot of fun for children in playgrounds as well as having
an educational effect.
As a memento and homage to the pioneer of
rope playing units, Berliner Seilfabrik revealed
a new playing unit in the autumn of 2014 –
the worldwide first rope play unit with
an outer structure made of wood:
The Globe.
Expanding on the Globe, Berliner is
presenting The Cube, which combines
the superior combination of a wooden
frame and a three-dimensional
space net.