Design Concepts
Pickleball Court Design: Maximizing Fun and ...

Pickleball is one of the hottest trends in recreation right now, and for good reason. It’s a welcoming sport that offers an abundance of fun. It’s known as a ‘game for everyone.’ Pickleball encourages physical activity to improve people’s fitness and wellness. As park designers, we see pickleball on the agenda for most of the park projects we work on.

Pickleball Court Design: Maximizing Fun and Functionality
Erik Spring
Erie Community Park: Third and Final Phase

This summer we celebrated the grand opening of the third and final phase of Erie Community Park. 12 acres of features were added to this park extending its value to the community. The park is consistently filled with people enjoying all it has to offer, and we could be more excited to see that enthusiasm.

Erie Community Park: Third and Final Phase
Design Concepts
Outdoor Classrooms: Now More Than Ever

This past year, schools all over the country were forced to allow fewer students inside and keep classes physically separate from each other, making their outside spaces a hot commodity. In many cases schools had to scramble to figure out ways to make this happen with little time to plan. We propose that to better equip schools for the future, more time, funding, and attention is needed to design these outdoor learning environments in ways students, teachers and the neighboring community can enjoy throughout the year.

Outdoor Classrooms: Now More Than Ever
Design Concepts
Two Hunters Park: A Tribute to Mark Martinez ...

Parks all around the world are known for igniting emotions of hope, peace, and optimism. Two Hunters Park, a commemorative park honoring the lives of Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin of Firestone, CO is no exception.

Two Hunters Park: A Tribute to Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin
Schools
Design Concepts
Helping Our Community Grow

We worked alongside these supporters for several years with continuing development on Lafayette Elementary’s garden as well as their three playgrounds. Recently, we began replacing raised flower beds in areas being reestablished.

Helping Our Community Grow

Playground

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Underway at Carmody: A New Universal Accessible Playground

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Art, music, physical activity, sensory stimulation, connection to nature and just good old-fashioned outdoor play are the key design ingredients for the new playground at Carmody’s Park and Recreation Center complex in Lakewood, Colorado.

It’s an all-inclusive playground with “Play Principles” focused on design for those with physical limitations and development disabilities.  Accessible, developmentally progressive, therapeutic and kinetically engaging play features are central themes for this play place. 

Every piece of play considers all-inclusive abilities from the music pod, sand play diggers and fossil discoveries, a basketball court with painted games, sensory play center, hill climbers, and adventure rocks and more.  Play structures like the lily pad stepper, split log beam, dynamic surfer and cozy dome are sure to create wonder and awe, and even bring out the kid in all of us.

This will be a magical place.

Frances Jacobs Incorporates Energy Theme Into School Playground

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean.  This quote is one of many energy-themed educational elements found at Frances Jacobs School in Denver, where color, textures and patterns vividly intertwine the theme throughout the site. The October 2015 issue of Landscape Record magazine focuses on projects around the world and how vibrant design is at the forefront. Design Concepts is proud to have Frances Jacobs School in Denver included as one of the highlighted projects, found on page 108.

Schoolyards offer playful opportunities to incorporate vivid colors with a variety of whimsical textures and patterns into fun and educational elements. Energy-themed elements at Frances Jacobs incorporate an abundance of color as that was the strong desire of the principal, staff and other stakeholders who participated early on in the design phase. Talk about creativity! The energy theme produced an abundance of ideas for how to incorporate this theme into the site. For example, the eye-catching main entrance to the school is a “Wind Walk” of richly colored patterned concrete. The gateway signage portrays an abstract curving wind motion, and the outdoor amphitheater has etched energy-related quotes into the steps and sandblasted imagery such as corn, geothermal, petroleum, sun, coal and hydro power. Visit the playground and you’ll find a weathervane sculpture that represents kinetic energy as well as teaches navigational direction; windmill hopscotch, representing rotational energy converted from the wind created from rotating sails of the windmill, accessible for kids in wheelchairs; tetherball with “giant propellers” (etched colorful blowing triangles in the asphalt depicting “scattered” objects); and foursquare courts with the varieties of wind painted into the quadrants: moderate wind and hurricane wind for example. This project was an enjoyable one not to mention a learning experience for Design Concepts, the staff and students!

Schoolyard Facelift in Logan County Colorado

Caliche Elementary received a $7,000 School Play Yard Initiative grant from Great Outdoors Colorado to help the school upgrade their old and outdated playground. The Caliche K-12 School was built to serve rural communities near Iliff, Colorado, and the site also serves as a community’s park site during off hours. Design Concepts is working with the staff and students to provide a Master Plan that will help the school’s application for a $100,000 construction grant to build the playground. Highlights of the Master Plan includes new playground equipment with accessible surfacing, gardens, new early childhood area fencing with windscreen, safer court play areas, and a group shade shelter with picnic tables to be used for class activities, socializing and afterschool activities. Farther from the school building a nature trail with mileage markers which incorporate information about local plants and animals, enhanced native planting areas, future synthetic turf field due to limited water availability are included in the master plan.

The school is also holding multiple fundraisers, as they will need to match a portion of the grant. The next fundraiser is “A Night at the Races”, to be held March 26 at the Elks Lodge in Sterling, Colorado.

Much of the school’s current equipment has been in place since the school was built in the 1980s, and doesn’t meet current safety standards.  GOCO’s program is a great opportunity for small communities to upgrade their facilities, provide a connection between students and their environment, and create invaluable outdoor learning spaces.

Design Concepts is an M/WBE, SBE Landscape Architecture design firm with the City and County of Denver and a DBE under the US Department of Transportation’s Colorado Unified Certification Program (UCP).