Travelling through the rushing New York City Fifth Avenue to the Parsons Making center, there is a colorful exhibition called, “Free Play” in the corner. It is a space integrates exhibition, game, and the act of play. Before going into the gallery, the entrance emits a characteristic of fun and playful with its bold and free color blocking glass design, inviting the audiences going into the area.

In this wide open spatial gallery, it includes all sort of games, like table tennis, chess, and video games. How they install the game gallery is kind of disappointed to me due to the high expectation from what entrance suggests. The theme and the impression suggest that the gallery is going to be full of quirky, unusual, and FUN game setup; however, the setup of the gallery just looks like a common room that people hangout in with some stools, tables, and games on them.

Despite all the regular looking game setup, the gallery actually has a game that looks more unusual, but still have the element of interactive. It is this piece that have a rectangular soil ground that almost take up 1/3 of the room. It might seem simple, but because of its larger size, it screams gallery fun. This area is not just a mud playground; it is an interactive game that the players need to occupy the space on it. The quality of the oversize ground setup, and the nature of the game is to have audiences stand in the game, it screams FUN and artsy.

If I were to make a shift in “Free Play”, I would make things bigger in this spatial room. For example, the game of chess on the table would be enlarged to take up 1/3 of the floor in the room. The setup can either make the enlarged chess minions to be light using foam, or let the players be minions in costumes. The shift for the game from regular size on the table to oversize on the floor gives a powerful gallery effect, but maintain the interactive game play.