Breakwater

Breakwater Playsculpture

(Located just off the 8th Street entrance to the Greater Jamestown Riverwalk Bike Path)

FACT SHEET
June 22, 2019

FUNDING

• $33,000 – KaBOOM! “Play Everywhere Challenge” Grant. Funding from the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation “Built to Play” initiative
  $17,000 – City of Jamestown in-kind (labor, materials, equipment)
• Project Total: $50,000

DETAILS

• Breakwater was 1 of 23 projects selected through a two-stage competition through KaBOOM’s “Play Everywhere Challenge” which teamed up with the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation’s “Built to Play” initiative to bring play to unexpected but everyday spaces, making it easy and available for kids and families across Western New York and Southeast Michigan.

• Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster, both studied art and architecture, and their multi-disciplinary practice has produced temporary installations, permanent public artworks and small works of architecture. In 2018, their work was awarded the prestigious League Prize by the Architectural League of New York.

• The project features four dolosse that have been treated with a bright blue Line-X treatment and have been arranged on top of a rubber surface that acts as both a fall-protection and unifying colorful base. The project site is located by the bike path of the Greater Jamestown Riverwalk near the Eighth Street entrance to the path.

• The dolosse are large pre-cast concrete elements that are prefabricated at a factory and typically arranged as breakwaters – barriers that protect shorelines from the impact of water.

• The project emphasizes the role of playspaces as an amenity and as a right, a part of urban infrastructure that isn’t always seen as essential but it should be. The play on the juxtaposition of mass-produced, large-scale elements with the world of the pedestrian and the child in particular creates a playful friction.