How An Empty Building Turned Into London’s Coolest Indoor Playground and Soft Play Centre

Project Overview – Creating a Commercial Indoor Playground

KIDZ#1 is an innovative 12,000 square foot indoor playground and family entertainment centre, combining soft play and education for kids aged 0 – 12 years old in Ealing, West London. Their aim is to provide the perfect environment for children to build their confidence and independence through play, whilst teaching them the essential team and social skills to thrive.

The Brief – Soft Play Equipment That Challenges The Senses

Kidz#1 approached us to provide a turnkey solution to help them develop a successful Family Entertainment Centre and design a cutting-edge indoor playground that would not only appeal to children aged 0 – 12 years old, but would also be unique in its aesthetic to stand out from its competitors and establish a recognisable and consistent brand within the play industry.

Our solution

The Kidz#1 project was one of our most challenging yet successful developments to date. To make the process as simple as possible for the client, we developed a turnkey solution which included providing a tailored business plan, offering advice on kitchen requirements, furniture and building services, giving access to our project Gantt charts to ensure the project stayed on track and providing free staff training at our 13,500sqft show site Astrabound Indoor Playground.

So alongside providing expert advice and guidance on the setup and development of a Family Entertainment Centre and after being presented with an empty shell of a building, we worked closely with the client as well as their team of architects, contractors and interior designers to develop an optimum building layout for the facility.

This not only provided the venue with instant visual impact as the customer entered the building through clever positioning of the indoor play equipment, but also allowed for 360 degree vantage points with clear lines of sight for parents from the central seating area to the play areas, allowing for easy parental supervision and providing customers with peace of mind.

Once the layout was agreed, the next stage was the production of the 3D playground design. However, because of the limited height within the building and the fact that the play equipment was sat within a shallow pit, with the rest of the venue being on a slightly raised level, some clever solutions were needed. These included tailoring the heights of individual play levels to maximise the play space available and designing mini ramps to aid access into the play structures.

To appeal to the children’s sense of imagination, our designers split the play structures into different zones, each one themed as different location in London. By moving around the play areas, the children could pretend they were exploring a host of various play spaces including moving through the London sewers crawl tube tunnels, making their way through rush hour commuter bash bags or racing down the amazing Union Jack 4 lane slide.

To ensure the younger visitors were also catered for we made sure that the babies and toddlers also had their own separate play area. This was located away from the larger junior play structure to give parents peace of mind that their children could play freely in a safe and appropriate environment. This area was built as a London street scene complete with a multi level play space themed as a double decker bus!

We worked closely with the client and their team of interior designers and architects to ensure that the colour schemes, graphics and play features all complemented the rest of the facility which helped emphasise the brand. The result is one of the most striking examples of a modern indoor playground in a family entertainment venue that caters for the whole family.

Kids number 1 is a premium venue and will serve the local community well offering a great play provision. For more information review their website.