Barbara Bestor
Pirate Therapy, 2009
Photographic prints, model
11x17 prints, 9" x 14" model, foamcore and cardboard and string.
Courtesy Lola Martin and family
This play structure was developed with Kate Feiertag and Cathy Kim in my office, for a client who is currently seven years old and has an extensive physical therapy regime. The intent is to make a play space that is fun, spatially complex and has multiple PT regimes built into it with the possibility of more uses over time as the child grows. There is a loft, rope ladder, pole, climbing wall, swing, ballet bar, dance mirror, secret windows, blackboards, monkey bars, crawling tunnel and desk. Happily it has apparently been very effective! PLAY has been one of my office's general themes for quite some time and I don't think it is an accident that it coincides with my daughters' birth and growth. Parenting has radically changed my priorites and in my work it has manifest itself quite literally- a return to bold color and pattern, making indoor and outdoor rooms that multitask as kid areas by day and adult spaces by night, and a constant search for... play.