MARSHALL FREDERICKS ONLINE EXHIBITIONS
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  • HOME
  • BLOG
  • Resources
  • Create
    • Botanical Ornament
    • Coloring Pages
    • Draw and Share
    • From Drawing to Wire Sculpture
    • Paper Mache
    • Sculpt And Share
    • Soap Carving
  • S.T.E.A.M.
    • Outdoor Sculpture
    • The Science of Metal Casting
    • Sculpture Garden Plant Life
  • Virtual Exhibitions
    • John Brown
    • Off Kilter
    • Exposure
    • Monuments
    • Mosaic
    • Carl Fredericks
    • Harold Neal
    • Tradition Interrupted
    • Notes From the Quarantimes
    • Luis Garza Photographs
    • RBJSE 2021
    • Michigan Modern
    • Form Foundations
    • Hip Hop Icons
    • Mark Beltchenko: SOS
    • Explorations in Wood
  • Virtual Field Trip
  • Virtual Tour
  • NEA Big Read
    • What is Big Read?
    • House on Mango Street
    • Big Read Calendar
    • Mi Casa, Su Casa >
      • Story Library
    • Big Read Survey
    • Public Art Project >
      • Bay County Art Project
      • Midland County Art Project
      • Saginaw County Art Project
  MARSHALL FREDERICKS ONLINE EXHIBITIONS
Picture
Picture

​ Primates At Play

Furniture for Great Ape House and Playground Equipment for Children
When Fredericks was commissioned to design modern furniture and toys for apes in a modern designed building at the Detroit Zoo, he used the concept of Design Thinking by studying the orangutans, gibbons, and chimpanzees at the zoo for months to determine their needs. For the material, he selected fiberglass and stainless steel for hygienic reasons and bright colors that the apes seem to like.

The modern-designed colorful furniture and toys for apes, and stainless steel and reinforced fiberglass objects are described as: monkey-go-round, double trapeze ring, trapeze pallet, climbing tree, mushroom seat and weighing scales, pallet stools, sleeping pallet, and spring exercising ladder.
​
This original Great Ape Exhibit was replaced by The Great Apes of Harambee Exhibit in the 1980s.
Young gorilla climbs on the spring exercising ladder
A ​young gorilla sits on a
weighing scale
Multi-colored play equipment for great apes
Multi-colored mobile play equipment for the great apes
Picture
May 1955 Detroit Zoo publication featuring modern designed architectural rendering of the Holden Amphitheater and Great Ape Exhibit
Two City of Detroit Zoological Park Commission letters allowing Fredericks to proceed with designing modern equipment for the interior of seven Great Ape Exhibit rooms
Fredericks’s list of laminated fiber glass equipment in the Great Ape Exhibit rooms
La Barre Associates invoice to Fredericks for fabrication and
installation of his equipment designs for seven Great Ape Exhibit rooms
Playground Equipment for Children
After designing the ape gymnastic equipment and furniture at the Detroit Zoological Institute in the 1950s, Fredericks embarked on a new journey of designing school playground furnishings using similar modern concepts. He created small scale examples of a red spiral slide, a yellow slide, playhouse, swimming pool, and playground turn-around. Although they were never realized in full-scale to be placed in a playground, the Museum preserves and shares Fredericks’s maquette models. Had they been fabricated, they would have been very modern in design and composed of bright colored Fiberglas and stainless steel. 
Playhouse design proposal
Swimming pool design proposal

360 DEGREE MALL SCULPTURE MODELS

These 360 degree videos are from objects in the exhibition. ​