OUR DESIGN PHILOSOPHY revolves around the belief that learning to take incremental risks and experiencing the joy of overcoming obstacles is an essential part of early-childhood development. Our play structures help children explore their physical environments through balancing, jumping, climbing, swinging and sliding, all while supporting social interaction and creativity. We carry these guiding principles with us all the way through our design process.
It is critically important to us to determine early that we are a right match for our clients. Our Play Theory is integral to how we design and build. Once we understand that we have value-alignment we want to understand what’s inspired you; other play environments, some natural tidal creation, the crayon drawing of your child, or whatever. We’ll get to budget later. For now the only thing we want to know is, if you could, where would you take this. This part of the process usually involves a healthy amount of sketching, site visits, forest hikes, beach walks, and a game or two of charades as we try to get the vision out of our heads and into the space around us. It’s fun work, and it is important work, because in the next stage we need to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work rationalizing that design work into the physical world of material properties and financial budgets.
This means so many things to us. Because we are both designers and builders, we think of the design development phase as dependent on the valuable feedback of the diverse team of experts we have on staff. As we are refining the early conceptual designs, we are listening closely to the pre-construction team who is reviewing the concepts in parallel, advising on budgeting, constructability, CSA compliance, durability, structural viability, material selection, and other essential deliverables. By the end of this phase, we’ve collaboratively built a final design, firm budget, scope of work, 3D model and shop drawings, and a project schedule.
The workshop is an integral part to our approach. It is the place where our designers and builders gather to create. For some projects, this is the place we challenge assumptions by testing materials in non-traditional configurations, which often allows us to design daring structures with confidence. For all of our work, we manage the accuracy and quality of prefabrication and pre-assembly by performing this work in the controlled environment of our workshop. Because we are working with organic shapes, our designers and builders are frequently between the workshop floor and modelling station where we are adapting the design to accommodate the real-life challenges of working with this medium. When the pre-work is done and the material is packaged for an efficient install, our team mobilizes for the rapid installation of the play elements.