Ural Forest Children Playground Equipment

The main principle and inspiration behind our design is the unique nature of the Urals, specifically the mixed forests where coniferous and deciduous trees thrive alongside mushrooms, bears, and insects. The core idea behind the project was to integrate this natural “DNA” into the urban environment to give back to children the living forest in a playhub format. We designed the space across two distinct scales: the Microworld and the Macroworld. In the Leaves and Ants zone toddlers can feel tiny between oversized shapes, playing within an effect of nature under a magnifying glass, improving their social skills and learning cooperation. The Macroworld represents the high forest, featuring trees, massive bears and mushrooms, vertical pathways, and bigger challenges. Here, the setting requires children to show physical grit, wait their turn on narrow bridges, learn where to yield or where to hold their ground. Modern urban environments are often overly safe, while in fact, providing calculated risk for children allows them to learn how to overcome fear and test the world's boundaries. It is absolutely vital for their psychological development, and can be done within the safe boundaries of meticulously engineered architecture. Ultimately, the nub is designed for children to grow within its borders, finding a new layer of complexity every time as they age, instead of outgrowing it in a single season. Finally, the project embraces "honest architecture" by refusing cheap, primitive bright colors in favor of an aesthetically sophisticated framework that takes children seriously as individuals fully capable of navigating complex emotions, routes, and real-time decisions.

Our primary focus in designing this work was to create an environment that naturally fosters social connections and neuroplasticity in children of all ages, achieved subtly through open play and direct physical experience. We specifically wanted to revive the lost tradition of spontaneous "backyard socialization," which we accomplished in the toddler zone by using an anthill metaphor with structures that gently nudge children toward collective cooperation, communication, and shared action. For older children, we aimed to introduce healthy risks to build assertiveness, self-confidence, and group negotiation skills. Additionally, we wanted to support cognitive flexibility and neuroplasticity by pairing contrasting materials and textures like warm timber and cool metal. Apart from that, we wanted to achieve true organic authenticity in visuals, ensuring that no two trees looked exactly alike. And finally, we aimed at creating single-post play structures of the greatest height we ever saw in Russian or international practice. There are plenty of multi-legged play towers out there, but a single-post structure of this scale is a genuinely unique engineering achievement: designing a monolithic, single-post structure that can safely handle loads from weather and full occupation of playing children.

This design was commissioned by S&P landscape studio, who approached us with the core theme of the Ural forest and the initial idea of using coniferous and deciduous trees, which we then took as our inspiration to fully design and realize the project's visual imagery. While our client acted as an exceptional collaborator — providing tight feedback and pushing us to refine the concepts until we achieved a more airy, transparent style for elements like the giant bears — the structural and artistic sculpting of the trees, wildlife, and natural motifs was handled entirely by our team. Ultimately, we pursued this specific concept to bring the authentic DNA of the Ural and Russian wilderness into an urban play space, turning their initial sketches into a deeply custom, cohesive landscape that celebrates our local flora and fauna.

That defining moment emerged during the sketching phase. Initially, our designs leaned toward literal, semi-realistic forms, such as a direct tree shape or a realistic animal. However, we realized this literalism completely clashed with the river embankment's modern architecture. The forms also felt too heavy and lacked structural transparency. Through these abstract, irregular geometric forms, we created a landmark that is both stylised and natural at its core.

We solved this by designing the play hub as a continuous, unified ecosystem rather than a collection of isolated elements. For toddlers, the Ants and Leaves zone acts as a secure "microworld" where oversized structures foster early cooperation and physical training safely away from high-speed play. This area is distinctly divided from the "macroworld" of the massive Tree towers, where older children can tackle vertical challenges and controlled risks. The zones are accessible to children of any age, but separated by activities, so varying play dynamics do not cross each other, thus avoiding conflicts. In addition to that, through these layered, age-specific scenarios within a shared forest narrative, children find new levels of complexity to graduate into as they grow.

Parametric software was essential for marrying our irregular, asymmetrical Tree forms with rigorous engineering. Because these structures look different from every angle, every single hexagonal panel possesses a completely unique geometry. In contrast, the joints utilize a universal design to reduce the technical documentation and streamline production. As a result, the structures were built as a modular constructor set that was perfectly pre-fitted at our factory and then safely bolted together on-site without a single weld. Weather loads were calculated through simulations using different software, after which our engineers carefully designed enhanced main beams and distributed the weight loads across the foundation. This part of the project was revised several times to ensure the durability and safety of the structures.