— Feature
Net Heroes
Toshiko and Charles MacAdam’s crocheted structures turn art into a playground.
by Kim Cook
I prefer to see the space first. How the sunlight looks, the changing colors, how you feel in the surrounding nature.”
There’s a vibrant community of textile artists in the Canadian Maritimes, but there’s only one company creating two-ton, thirty-foot-wide crocheted pieces for kids to romp on.
In Nova Scotia’s pastoral Annapolis Valley, Toshiko and Charles MacAdam run Interplay Design & Manufacturing, where they mastermind giant art installation/play structures woven of stretchy nylon fibers. The structures have delighted visitors to museums, parks, and playgrounds around the world. They’ve been the backdrop for gangster chases in Jackie Chan films and have even been found their way into video games.
Born in Tokyo in 1940, Toshiko Horiuchi’s experience as a post-war refugee profoundly impacted her. “I realized even as a young child that life should be spent doing what makes one happy.” With degrees from Tama Art University and Cranbrook Academy of Art. she became a staff designer at the Boris Kroll Fabric Company in New York City, then through the 60s, taught weaving and fabric design at various institutions.
Horiuchi continued creating her art while teaching and is considered a leading member of the 1970s’ new wave’ of experimental fiber artists. She explored woven fiber’s relationship with light and movement in pieces like ‘Atmosphere of the Forest,’ ‘Atmosphere of the Floating Cube,’ and ‘Luminous Curtain,’ and became fascinated with how manipulating knitted material created new shapes – crocheting was a technique she termed even ‘more freeing.’
Then one day in 1970, something happened in a Tokyo gallery that set her on a new trajectory. Two children jumped into the artwork Horiuchi had just installed, and it started bouncing, shifting shape. The piece came to life as they played. “The textiles started moving, and I thought, ‘Fantastic! This is much more interesting than just making beautiful things,’” she says. And that meant creating art for children. Researching Tokyo playgrounds, she saw how uninspired the steel and concrete spaces were. She was determined to make lively, soft, and welcoming places to play, engrained in textile sculpture, so she worked with landscape architect Fumiako Takano on a netted play space in an Okinawan park in 1979 that drew raves.
Her first large commission was ‘Knitted Wonder Space 2’ for the Hakone Open Air Museum in Japan – a crocheted 50’ x 30’ wonderland of swinging balls, hammocks and bouncy surfaces, made of over 1400 pounds of brightly-colored nylon rope that Toshiko spent a year knitting by hand.
Horiuchi met Charles McAdam while he was working in finance in Tokyo and dabbling in art on the side; they bonded over their love of textile art. After their son was born, they opted to leave Japan, landing in Canada, Charles McAdam’s homeland. They’ve been in Bridgetown for over thirty-five years, where Charles oversees the projects. As he has said, “Toshi makes it. I make it happen.”
Interplay has created dozens of projects in Japan over the years. Perhaps Toshiko McAdam’s most famous project is 2009’s ‘Woods of Net’, at Hakone. She asked that venerable engineering expert Torihide Imagawa be brought in to design the complex all-wood structure that supports her creation, and Interplay has continued to work with his firm. In Hokkaido’s Takino Suzuran Hillside national park, Interplay created ‘Rainbow Nest’, a 2000 – a 28-foot-wide, 1,000-lb braided nylon structure with hanging pendulums, hidey-holes, and bouncing net.
Toshiko McAdam used a PVA material called vinyl on in her early work, then switched to nylon. Today they prefer a solution-dyed filament that’s sent to the west coast of Canada for initial processing, and then they do the final fiber correction and braiding. They have a small team, and hire locally for global installations, but Toshiko still crochets and assembles.
Toshiko McAdam recalls how her initial play structure proposals met with maintenance concerns from the Japanese government. She pointed to gardening and frequent shoji screen repair. “We’re used to these traditions of maintenance in our lives.” She recalls wryly how one government naysayer came back to her years later wanting to order a park commission; his mind had been changed after watching his kids play on the nets.
Toshiko McAdam says she approaches all new projects the same way: “I prefer to see the space first. How the sunlight looks, the changing colors, how you feel in the surrounding nature.” She likens the energy of her structures to a child’s experience in the womb. And in fact, pediatric doctors have told her that exploring play on these giant nets is measurably helpful with development.
The indoor installations are usually just up for an exhibition period. The outdoor ones may be up for years. Charles McAdam says everybody understands that with thousands of rambunctious children jumping and leaping on them, there will be wear over time, so long-term installations receive regular inspections for reinforcement or replacement. The pandemic paused many projects and proposals, but things are moving again – among them installations at high-rise residences in India and Miami, and an orphan’s charity facility in Iraq.
The couple say what they love about their work is the reaction of children. They meet grownups who recall playing on Toshiko McAdam’s early pieces and now bring their own families to explore them. They’re approached by new net climbers, too. One little boy came up to Toshiko, gave her a hug, and said, “I’ve been to lots and lots of things at museums, and yours is the best ever. You’re Superman!”
Kim Cook is a contributing writer for regional and global news outlets including the Associated Press.
There’s a vibrant community of textile artists in the Canadian Maritimes, but there’s only one company creating two-ton, thirty-foot-wide crocheted pieces for kids to romp on.
In Nova Scotia’s pastoral Annapolis Valley, Toshiko and Charles MacAdam run Interplay Design & Manufacturing, where they mastermind giant art installation/play structures woven of stretchy nylon fibers. The structures have delighted visitors to museums, parks, and playgrounds around the world. They’ve been the backdrop for gangster chases in Jackie Chan films and have even been found their way into video games.
Born in Tokyo in 1940, Toshiko Horiuchi’s experience as a post-war refugee profoundly impacted her. “I realized even as a young child that life should be spent doing what makes one happy.” With degrees from Tama Art University and Cranbrook Academy of Art. she became a staff designer at the Boris Kroll Fabric Company in New York City, then through the 60s, taught weaving and fabric design at various institutions.
Horiuchi continued creating her art while teaching and is considered a leading member of the 1970s’ new wave’ of experimental fiber artists. She explored woven fiber’s relationship with light and movement in pieces like ‘Atmosphere of the Forest,’ ‘Atmosphere of the Floating Cube,’ and ‘Luminous Curtain,’ and became fascinated with how manipulating knitted material created new shapes – crocheting was a technique she termed even ‘more freeing.’
Then one day in 1970, something happened in a Tokyo gallery that set her on a new trajectory. Two children jumped into the artwork Horiuchi had just installed, and it started bouncing, shifting shape. The piece came to life as they played. “The textiles started moving, and I thought, ‘Fantastic! This is much more interesting than just making beautiful things,’” she says. And that meant creating art for children. Researching Tokyo playgrounds, she saw how uninspired the steel and concrete spaces were. She was determined to make lively, soft, and welcoming places to play, engrained in textile sculpture, so she worked with landscape architect Fumiako Takano on a netted play space in an Okinawan park in 1979 that drew raves.
Her first large commission was ‘Knitted Wonder Space 2’ for the Hakone Open Air Museum in Japan – a crocheted 50’ x 30’ wonderland of swinging balls, hammocks and bouncy surfaces, made of over 1400 pounds of brightly-colored nylon rope that Toshiko spent a year knitting by hand.
Horiuchi met Charles McAdam while he was working in finance in Tokyo and dabbling in art on the side; they bonded over their love of textile art. After their son was born, they opted to leave Japan, landing in Canada, Charles McAdam’s homeland. They’ve been in Bridgetown for over thirty-five years, where Charles oversees the projects. As he has said, “Toshi makes it. I make it happen.”
Interplay has created dozens of projects in Japan over the years. Perhaps Toshiko McAdam’s most famous project is 2009’s ‘Woods of Net’, at Hakone. She asked that venerable engineering expert Torihide Imagawa be brought in to design the complex all-wood structure that supports her creation, and Interplay has continued to work with his firm. In Hokkaido’s Takino Suzuran Hillside national park, Interplay created ‘Rainbow Nest’, a 2000 – a 28-foot-wide, 1,000-lb braided nylon structure with hanging pendulums, hidey-holes, and bouncing net.
Toshiko McAdam used a PVA material called vinyl on in her early work, then switched to nylon. Today they prefer a solution-dyed filament that’s sent to the west coast of Canada for initial processing, and then they do the final fiber correction and braiding. They have a small team, and hire locally for global installations, but Toshiko still crochets and assembles.
Toshiko McAdam recalls how her initial play structure proposals met with maintenance concerns from the Japanese government. She pointed to gardening and frequent shoji screen repair. “We’re used to these traditions of maintenance in our lives.” She recalls wryly how one government naysayer came back to her years later wanting to order a park commission; his mind had been changed after watching his kids play on the nets.
Toshiko McAdam says she approaches all new projects the same way: “I prefer to see the space first. How the sunlight looks, the changing colors, how you feel in the surrounding nature.” She likens the energy of her structures to a child’s experience in the womb. And in fact, pediatric doctors have told her that exploring play on these giant nets is measurably helpful with development.
The indoor installations are usually just up for an exhibition period. The outdoor ones may be up for years. Charles McAdam says everybody understands that with thousands of rambunctious children jumping and leaping on them, there will be wear over time, so long-term installations receive regular inspections for reinforcement or replacement. The pandemic paused many projects and proposals, but things are moving again – among them installations at high-rise residences in India and Miami, and an orphan’s charity facility in Iraq.
The couple say what they love about their work is the reaction of children. They meet grownups who recall playing on Toshiko McAdam’s early pieces and now bring their own families to explore them. They’re approached by new net climbers, too. One little boy came up to Toshiko, gave her a hug, and said, “I’ve been to lots and lots of things at museums, and yours is the best ever. You’re Superman!”
Kim Cook is a contributing writer for regional and global news outlets including the Associated Press.
I prefer to see the space first. How the sunlight looks, the changing colors, how you feel in the surrounding nature.”
