Highland Park

Highland Park

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The Dunedin City Council had $250,000 to develop the 0.67ha reserve at Highland Park subdivision in Mosgiel.

Client:
Dunedin City Council
Location:
Dunedin

After consultation with the public, they were looking for a company who understood their vision of a park with something for everyone.

Creo presented an attractive playscape concept, designed to provide multiple opportunities for play and exercise, for people of all ages.

The design was a winner and Creo was chosen to deliver the project.

The final result is an attractive and functional reserve that provides fun and encourages activity for families and individuals.

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Young World Childcare Centre

Young World Childcare Centre

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Young World Childcare Centre is in a new building in Owairaka, Auckland.

Client:
Young World Childcare
Location:
Owairaka, Auckland

The design for this north facing corner site provides children with a warm secure play space that transitions seamlessly between the indoor and outdoor spaces.

The space was designed to have two separate areas to cater for children aged between 0 to 2 and 2 to 5 years.

Although they are separated, the design ensures a visual connection between the two areas.

The focus for both areas was to create flexible outdoor spaces that provide a safe but challenging environment, where confidence and learning can flourish.

The Creo design team worked with the clients from the initial concept process, then oversaw the construction of the design. This process ensured the original design intent was carried throughout the project.

Due to the size and height constraints of the site, the design aimed to utilise every bit of available space and allow for easy access around the outdoor areas and between the two levels in the site. This was achieved by connecting two levels with a sloped play area.

The slope is surfaced with Numat Pour‘n’Play, a certified safety surface, allowing for the inclusion of an in-ground slide, rope climb, and rock climbing grips.

This not only provides upper body challenges, sliding and hill play but allows free-flowing play to occur between the two levels, as well exciting play opportunities.

The Pour‘n’Play sloped surface transitions at the lower level into a flat landscape turfed area. This greener area is also a safety surface and allows for different activity play configurations to occur.

To the other side of the lower level, every bit of playable space is utilised to provide a range of sensory activities from water features, planting spaces, waterplay and sand play.

Blackboard, mirrors and outdoor kitchens encourage the children to explore and be creative within this sensory area.

A raised sleeper wall cleverly helps to keep most sand within the sandpit, while also providing separation to the covered deck space, children are subtly encouraged through the design to enter the sandpit and garden area from one point only off the deck, leaving large areas of the deck free for different activities or quiet spaces to be created.

A stepped access is also provided to reach the top of the mound and viewing platform, so that the less able children are also able to easily get access to the top of the play area.

Hidden within the steps is outdoor storage space, additional to the two cedar sheds providing storage to each end of the play area.

The area above the mound provides a more natural character to the top of the site, with fruit trees, planted areas, mulched surfaces and rocks to reflect the local Maunga and lava flows of the area. This theme is also carried through in the boundary rock wall.

Situated within this upper area is a fale structure that recognises the diversity in the local community and provides a high vantage point for children to view out across the centre and look back into the centre. This structure also provides a platform for informal imaginative play.

The site’s shape and level change provided challenges but due to the multipurpose surfaces, a wide range of different play experiences and areas were created to suit the centre’s needs.

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Orakei School

Orakei School

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“The students have loved using the spaces. It’s allowed them to really explore their creativity.”

Client:
Orakei School
Location:
Orakei, Auckland
Circa Budget:
$500,000

Asphalt is great on driveways… but on playgrounds? It’s not so good. This is something Orakei School Principal, Matthew Crumpton, knows well.

In 2015, his school’s outdoor area was dominated by asphalt surfacing which was unappealing and a potential danger to the 300 kids attending the school.

As Matthew puts it, “What we had here was a massive amount of asphalt space which was very dark, very grey, and very damaged. It was a bit of a health and safety issue.”

The school's vision was for a completely transformed space. One with excitement and vibrant play opportunities for the kids.

To help with making this vision a reality, Matthew and the Board of Trustees had started researching architects and construction companies.

Weighing up

After exploring the option of working with an architect to come up with a design and then finding a construction company to deliver it, they came across Creo in a brochure. Seeing some of Creo’s work was exciting and the promise of simplicity and a more supportive approach provided by a combined architectural and construction team was attractive.

“We had a really good initial meeting and when Creo put together the design for us we were just blown away with it straight away. We explored three options in total, but we just felt the proposal made by Creo and the initial work that was created, it made absolute sense to us to go with the Creo team,” says Matthew.

Putting down

The design Creo made for Orakei School introduced turf courts to cover part of the old asphalt surface and used coloured pathways, in the school’s colours, to created various play zones and a sense of flow between classrooms and play areas. The construction of the new space progressed well, and the school ended up with a result they were proud of.

“The students have just loved it. They’re totally over the moon. The reaction isn’t just when they are out playing – it’s when they’re walking through the grounds, that sense of pride about their school that, ‘these are our playgrounds,’ and it has filtered through to the whole of the community really – the effect of changing the spaces outside,” says Matthew.

Building relationships

Throughout the process, Creo focused on providing the school with clear communication and expert support, ensuring key Creo staff were available to discuss the project with school staff at any time. From Matthew’s perspective, this was an important step in building a solid, long-term relationship with Creo.

“For me personally, it was important to be working with the right people. Having people there that can support you through the process. People that were available and just a phone call away that you can have that connection with and build that relationship with. That was really important to me as Principal.”

For the Board of Trustees, it was the value they were getting that mattered most – making sure the school was making the best use of its capital and getting maximum ‘bang for buck’. It was here that Creo really shined, coming up with some unique design features to utilise parts of the old playground, that would otherwise have been wasted, to keep costs down.

Matthew says, “The students have loved using the spaces. We created a peaked mound area that we thought they would sit on and hang out on, but they actually love playing football on it, and actually having the gradient makes it even more exciting for them. It’s allowed them to really explore their creativity.”

Looking forward

You’d think that after completing such a grand design that Matthew and his team would be taking a long and deserved break from the business of school improvement, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“The challenge for us is, and the challenge for anyone I suppose once you do something that’s striking and new and brilliant, is it makes everything else look a bit tired, so we want to now explore putting some type of adventure zone in our forest area,” says Matthew, to which he’s quick to add, “Creo will be the first people we’ll give a call to.”

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Equippers Early Learning Centre

Equippers Early Learning Centre

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“We’ve been able to present a World-class playspace that kids are just going to enjoy for many years.”

Client:
Equippers Church
Location:
Manakau, Auckland
Circa Budget:
$200,000

Equippers Church in Manukau was experiencing growing pains.

The popular Auckland church had seen significant growth and consequently they were running out of space for their kids programme.

So, when the property next door came up for sale, church Pastor, Barrett Ruakere, saw an opportunity to expand the church and create some space for the congregation’s youngest members.

Soon though, that vision had grown, and what had started out as a solution to the problem of not having enough space for the kids programme, soon became the starting point for a radical vision of a Bible-based Early Learning Centre.

“I saw the for-sale sign go up on the property next door and I felt that this was a property that we really needed to own. Very rarely does a property come up right next door to your church and so from that vision, it sort of launched into what is now an early learning centre for children,” says Barrett.

Initially, the church found a construction company to help them develop the space. This led to the selection of Lifestyle Architects for the design of the facility and it was through Lifestyle Architects that the church first heard about Creo.

Barrett and the church leadership had a striking vision for the centre. They wanted to reproduce some of the great stories of the Bible to provide physical reminders and reference points that could be used for teaching and inspiring young minds.

“I sort of had in my mind, five features that were key. So, we started with things like Jonah’s Whale, things like Joseph’s Dream Coat.

So, rather than ordinary shade sails, our coloured shade sails have a biblical theme and that’s running above the kid’s heads, so we can always reference that.”

“The Creo construction team and design team were pretty cutting edge. They were doing things that hadn’t been done in other centres. "

“They were very inclusive of what we were trying to achieve and adaptable in how they could achieve our goals through their design works and construction,” says Barrett. 

“The partnership was really key for me because I was being heard and the vision was being translated into the technology and construction methods that were available.”

To achieve this level of accordance between purpose and design, it was important that Creo listened to the Church leadership and provided sound advice on the design while remaining open to innovation.

The finished play space is a marvel to behold.

Upon entering the centre’s grounds, the visitor is presented with a scene straight from the pages of The Book of Jonah – a Pour’n’Play whale, with fully functional water spout, emerges from the deep.

Beyond that, a sand pit and water play area are bordered by a Perspex wall that’s decorated to resemble ‘the parting of the Red Sea.’ Moving further into the over twos area there is an Ark, set in Pour’n’Play surfacing.

“The final outcome we’ve achieved here with Creo is World-class. That’s the word that stands out for me. We’ve had people come through the centre, people who have their own Early Learning Centres, and it’s inspired them. Not only have we been cutting edge in our design, we’ve been able to present a World-class playspace that kids are just going to enjoy for many years.”

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