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.
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.
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.
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.
Universal play environments must be accessible to everyone--mobility challenged children to senior citizens. In the second of our three-part blog series on inclusive play, Senior Project Manager Roger Burkart gives a well-deserved shout-out to The Play Brigade and shares valuable resources for designing universal and accessible public spaces.
Inspiration Playground Wisdom Tree Bellevue Washington inclusive play playground custom art sculpture
It’s big, fantastical, otherworldly and whimsical! And it’s designed to be the grand centerpiece in the imaginary fairytale-like setting of Inspiration Playground in Bellevue, Washington.
This majestic fantasy-like tree is meticulously designed and meticulously fabricated collaboratively in the studios and workshops of Design Concepts and IDSculpture.
Loosely modeled from a giant cedar, the tree takes shape rising 24 feet tall high, with 10 and 12-foot spiraling gold branches, dotted with randomly placed light accents.
Carving art and faces into trees is commonplace but always a great find when stumbled upon. At Inspiration Playground, the face in the tree is artistically hand chiseled and carved. The face in the tree trunk is detailed and textured to look just like a subtly carved wood grain work of art, in this case, a wise old face.
What’s a whimsical tree without dramatic detail using fanciful lighting?! 10 strings of 204 ‘live node’ lights wind and weave around the branches to create a sensational visual appeal. The LED lights are programmable with variable colors, pulsing and contrast intensity. A light show can be programmed to complement events, holidays, theme or season. At night, it will glow and pulse creating a whimsical sculpture cutting through a dark sky.
From initial sketches and concepts that were imagined and created in the design studio of Design Concepts, the innovators and fabricators at IDSculpture were able to turn a concept into a constructible reality. Every detail of the tree has an artistic touch. From the tip of a spiral to the nose on the wise old face, both conceptualizer and fabricator alike took great care in each of the smallest of detail.
In the shop, the artists, craftsmen and fabricators of IDSculpture brought to life from the fantasy world of creative design and imagination. The tree is made of a propriety mix of concrete, PVC, rebar and steel. Solid cast concrete is topped with a hand sculpted topcoat layer—this is the medium to create the design texture and features of a realistic tree. Its base is anchored over 5 feet deep into the ground with reinforced concrete.
In the end, from idea, detail, artist or master craftsman, every part of the design and fabrication process highlights great innovators, idea-generators and collaborators. And this was only possible in the beginning when a great collaboration between the City of Bellevue and Rotary Club of Bellevue came to be.
All in all, the great majestic Whimsical Wisdom Tree comes to life today!
“Hey friends . . . We had a soggy and successful week up in Bellevue,” said Andy Dufford as he oversees the installation of the Canyon Boulders at Inspiration Playground. Yes, it’s another piece of the play + art story that includes the Canyon Waterfall that will lightly sprinkle water between two pieces of a granite boulder. Once a single form, the 5’ x 10’ boulder was sliced into large pieces—these are the canyon walls. Inside the playground, children will walk or wheel between the canyon walls with water cascading down. Working with us on this piece of play art located within the interactive water play area, Chevo Studios conceptualized the canyon concept. Fabrication required slicing the boulder in half lengthwise with a diamond wire saw, cutting 2.5’ of the end creating the flat base for the boulder to stand vertically. Then the boulder’s halves were cut into quarters to form the sides of the waterfall element, with the remaining half forming the dry side of the canyon wall. Cutting of the boulders took place on an open workshop site, and are currently being installed on site as the playground takes shape on these wet winter days in Bellevue.
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).
