Amusement parks: play - entertainment - education

Abstract

The amusement parks grew in France, in the nineties, as they did all over the world. They appear as places dedicated to entertainment within the construction of an illusion based frequently on sophisticated cultural and/or scientific contents. Wherefrom comes the temptation of seeing in them new education places that could serve as models to the museums. The universal exhibitions are places that frequently mix pedagogic perspectives with procedures of amusement parks. The article tries to analyze what characterizes this type of leisure and the architecture related to it, which proposes new objects that resemble oversized toys, since their logic is similar. It is indeed important to analyze the logic and the operation of these new leisure supports, to understand their limits as sites of formal education. This can only happen on the basis of an analysis of parks, of a deconstruction of their effects.