Project

Carlsbad Cove

Year

2017

Category

Industrial Design

Synopsis

This experiential play experience is to immerse kids to feel underwater with an aquarium towering over children as they weave through the other sea themed play pieces.

Team

Cory Surovek

Ellen Klein

Elizabeth Collins

Amir Khan

Carlsbad Cove is an indoor water theme children playground design intended for The Shoppes at Carlsbad, San Diego, California. Its location in the middle of the shopping mall gives parents an opportunity to have a moment of relaxation while kids immerse themselves with climbing and crawling through sculptural play pieces in a marine-like environment.

Inspiration  

The concept for Carlsbad Cove is to bring the beach and ocean sentiment to urban shoppers, creating an alternate reality of the crashing of waves, churning of water and the feeling of being submerged in marine life.  The laughter of children playing in San Diego surf is recreated in a sculptural and colorful environment where waves beckon: climbing and crawling, glittering digital flooring illuminates. 

Digital undersea

Aquarium

Production methods

• Carlsbad Cove is a soft play area intended for kids above the age of 3, from the rubber flooring, padded walls, and upholstery, to the foam coated play elements, makes this a really safe space suited for toddlers.
• For the slides and seagrass crawl through, makes use of plywood interiors, followed by EVA padding and a soft coat spray.
• As for the starfish dome, styrofoam blocks were cut from a 6-axis robotic arm, followed by a fiberglass coat, to increase the structural integrity of a climbing dome before turning it to soft play piece.

Installation liaison wireframe

As most installations occur at night in order not to disrupt businesses within shopping malls, there was a need to improve communication between CSP and the fabricators during odd hours on the progress of installs. Moreover, when 3rd party installers were responsible for the installation, it was essential to task them in informing us when they were completed in order to stay up to date, so we launched a design application to serve the needs of these installers to improve the communication between different parties.