Each year Docomomo US publishes a special edition of its online Newsletter dovetailed with the year’s topic theme. For 2026, that’s Recreation and Play. The first of two editions is now available online. The issue kicks off with a introduction by Utkarsha Laharia, an architect and architecture critic known for bringing overlooked histories and underrepresented voices into architectural discourse, in conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning design critic Alexandra Lange. In the exchange, Lange traces the postwar forces that built America’s playgrounds and pools, explains why play design has historically been dismissed as women’s work, and unpacks how one 1970s lawsuit ended the American experiment with loose, adventurous play spaces.

The five articles in Vol 1 include:

Loose Parts: The Adventure Playground Movement and Its San Francisco Bay Area Experiments, 1943–1979
Colin Alley, AIA
Tracing the journey of the adventure playground from its start in Europe to its positive reception in the counterculture of Northern California’s Bay Area.

Benjamín Domínguez: A Mexican-American Playground Designer
Aldo Solano Rojas, School of Architecture, UNAM
Sheding light on the figurative play-sculptures of Mexican-born sculptor and playground designer Benjamín Domínguez (1894-1974).

Naked Lady Park
Amber Winick, design historian
Personal recollections of Don Seiler’s monumental Sunbather sculpture in South Miami’s Dante Fascell Park. More than public art, it was a place to climb, imagine, fall down, and grow up.

Burr Mall: A Modern Town Green
Priyanka Panjwani,  Preservation Architect, Assistant Director, The Wadsworth
The Alfred E. Burr Memorial Mall in Hartford, CT, known as ‘Burr Mall,’ and carrying the tradition of town greens into the 21st century through modernist design.

Chasing Recognition: Legacies & Imagined Futures of Skateboarding at Chicago’s Exelon Plaza
Victoria Hill and Gabriel Vara
The significance of Chicago’s Exelon Plaza (1972) at Chase Tower as a vibrant public space and cornerstone of skateboarding culture.

Read the articles:
Special Edition Newsletter: Recreation and Play, Vol. 1

Volume 2 of Recreation and Play will be published in October to coincide with Docomomo US Tour Day which carries the same theme for 2026.