Sputnik Play Sculpture c. 1959

Photograph by Petr Karsulin Dolce Vita Magazine, Prague

Source:  MOMA Century of the Child Exhibition

I can only imagine how my boys would react if they were to discover this!  It actually looks like something my 6 year old would draw and ask me to build...and I would reply, "I'm not sure we can make a sphere in our backyard."  Guess there are no excuses now!

The era of the space race was a time of mounting ambitions and anxieties for adults, but for children all over the world it was a time of great imaginative play, with new designed environments in which they could act out their own aerospace adventures.  Junior astronauts and cosmonauts commanded scaled-down rockets and satellites, the most striking of which were abstract sculptural departures from the conventional forms.  Nemecek's interpretation of Sputnik's aluminum sphere as an elegant concrete play sculpture, encased in multicolored ceramic an featuring a climbing tube and slide, was originally installed in Stromovka Park, in Prague. - MOMA