Arbolope Studio is an award-winning landscape architecture and urban design firm based in St. Louis, Missouri ( MO ), USA

Sugarbaker Play Park Masterplan

Location
Jefferson City, MO
Client

Jefferson City Parks, Recreation & Forestry

The Sugarbaker Foundation

Team

The Architects Alliance

Jefferson City, MO

Services

Landscape Architecture

Public Art

Master Planning

Mobility Planning

Playscape Design

Awards
About the Project

The Sugarbaker Play Park is a one-of-a-kind, universally accessible, and nature-focused play landscape that builds upon a century of evolving concepts of play, including natural, loose-parts, adventure, and sculpture playgrounds.

Situated on the original Sugarbaker Orchard – now the Sugarbaker Foundation – the site includes the original home, extensive open field areas, woodland, and a pond. The master plan provides a cohesive framework for how those areas may be unified, while anticipating the integration of further developments on site, including event staging areas and a new school.

Unlike a traditional centralized and enclosed accessible playground, this project conceives of a destination play park that is fully integrated into the landscape; comprising a series of accessible, interconnected and play-activated pathways and nodes that invite children of all ages and abilities to learn, explore and play.

The project maintains a cohesive identity across a diverse range of site typologies through a curated material palette and a unifying “Missouri Creatures” concept, which guides the design of each individual play node to reference a different one of Missouri’s many native and adapted insects, birds, and mammals.