Educational Value
The Climber invites you to the top of the world where a microcosm of climbing experiences suspended in the space above the Atrium exhibits offers a unique bird's eye view of the bustling activity below. Children climb and balance and find the best perch from which to observe.
Motor and sensory
- The Climber provides opportunities for climbing and clambering, balancing, maneuvering around others and within multi-dimensional terrain.
- It also provides opportunties to use air and suspension to affect the space proper, such as shooting air at Noodle Forest for example, or moving prisms under the skylights if they can be made to throw rainbows across the space.
Imaginative play, immersion and risk
- Provides an experience that is perceived as risky and challenging, presenting an opportunity for children to test themselves and succeed by climbing out, up, through, and engaging in some mid-air activity.
- Provides opportunities to choose and maneuver among multiple routes.
Community, camaraderie, bonding
- The Climber is a central element of the atrium space connecting the upper and lower levels and encourages visitor interaction acrosss both the vertical and horizontal dimensions.
- There are clear sightlines from the Climber down to the lower floor and across to the Atrium, as well as through it between the mezzanine edges to the lower level. This allows us to see children in it from above and below, and for children to be able to see clearly out from inside it.
Theme messages
- The Climber reflects universal behaviors of childhood: go the interesting way, not the easy, flat way...climb and clamber...perch and watch. Trees, window-seats, the tops of playground equipment. Stand gazing in awe.
- The world looks one way from standing at the bottom of it looking up and completely different, but recognizable, from way up above.
- Using regular old stuff to make new stuff.