Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America (Architecture, Landscape and Amer Culture) - Softcover

Book 4 of 8: Architecture, Landscape and Amer Culture

Ogata, Amy F.

  • 4.30 out of 5 stars
    10 ratings by Goodreads
 
9780816679614: Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America (Architecture, Landscape and Amer Culture)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0816679614 ISBN 13: 9780816679614
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2013

Synopsis


The postwar American stereotypes of suburban sameness, traditional gender roles, and educational conservatism have masked an alternate self-image tailor-made for the Cold War. The creative child, an idealized future citizen, was the darling of baby boom parents, psychologists, marketers, and designers who saw in the next generation promise that appeared to answer the most pressing worries of the age.


Designing the Creative Child reveals how a postwar cult of childhood creativity developed and continues to this day. Exploring how the idea of children as imaginative and naturally creative was constructed, disseminated, and consumed in the United States after World War II, Amy F. Ogata argues that educational toys, playgrounds, small middle-class houses, new schools, and children’s museums were designed to cultivate imagination in a growing cohort of baby boom children. Enthusiasm for encouraging creativity in children countered Cold War fears of failing competitiveness and the postwar critique of social conformity, making creativity an emblem of national revitalization.


Ogata describes how a historically rooted belief in children’s capacity for independent thinking was transformed from an elite concern of the interwar years to a fully consumable and aspirational ideal that persists today. From building blocks to Gumby, playhouses to Playskool trains, Creative Playthings to the Eames House of Cards, Crayola fingerpaint to children’s museums, material goods and spaces shaped a popular understanding of creativity, and Designing the Creative Child demonstrates how this notion has been woven into the fabric of American culture.


"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author


Amy F. Ogata is associate professor at the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture in New York City. She is the author of Art Nouveau and the Social Vision of Modern Living and has published widely on modern architecture and design.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
Univ Of Minnesota Press
Publication date
2013
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0816679614
ISBN 13 
9780816679614
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
320
Rating
  • 4.30 out of 5 stars
    10 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780816679607: Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America (Architecture, Landscape and Amer Culture)

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0816679606 ISBN 13:  9780816679607
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2013
Hardcover