Arizona State University - Sun Devil Spark / Sahuaro Yearbook (Tempe, AZ)

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BY IOHN LEMONS The button eyes of a teddy bear stared from a crevice, watching as I walked in Alice's Wonderland. I saw my broken reflection in a shattered mirror and stood between two pits, one filled with sand, the other a pool of water. Stalagmite formations rose from the floor, reaching toward similar pro- trusions hanging from the ceiling. The Toy Talk room is a fairy- land where a child may wander in search of adventure. There is a small cave in which to hide and a porthole in one wall with a mirror which stares back the viewers' reflection. lt's like a dirt pile, said Ford Doran, art student and one of the room's builders. It is a cave. I like it, reads a crayoned message from a child. Entering room B60 in the Payne Building is like stum- bling upon an antechamber in the Carlsbad Caverns or the stomach of a leviathan. It comes as a shock because it is completely out of context in an otherwise standard building. The walls and ceiling are irregular with bulges and de- pressions. A huge pillar blocks off portions of the room and toys fill niches in the walls. The only recognizable object is a blackboard at one end of the room. Polyurethane foam, similar to styrofoam, covers the walls and ceiling. The visual effect is like stone but the material can be kicked or bitten without injury to children. Carpeting gives further protection and adds to the overall effect of softness. The center points of the room are the privacy mod- ules. The stalagmite forma- tions are partitions which form small enclosures for the parent and child to play together. Dif- ferent color lighting for each module adds further separa- tion from the rest of the room. The Toy Talk room is many things to many people. Richard Britz, architecture instructor at ASU, sees it as an alterna- tive method of institutional education, a break from the traditional class room and an experiment in psychological architecture. Dr. Robert Strom, chairman of the ASU department of ele- mentary education and initi- ator of the Toy Talk project, said it is the best for training individualized instruction. Parents will be taught learning Like stumbling on an antechamber in the Carlesbad Caverns or the stomach of a Ieviathan. Toy Talk-21

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