Exploration Place's Destination Playscape

Hoerr Schaudt was engaged in April 2023 to lead the master planning and landscape architecture design services for their existing twenty-acre riverside park that will include a seven-acre destination playscape, waterfront amphitheater, and interpretive riverfront trail. The playscape aspires to become an iconic national attraction, embodying science-centric and interpretive play while reflecting the region’s unique ecologies and histories. It will feature ten distinct playscape rooms, which are being conceptualized in collaboration with three renowned play providers.

Notable spaces and features include the signature play area known as Aviation Play Grove. This area boasts a 50-foot aviation control tower with a plane that appears to be mid-flight, a business jet and control tower, climbing tower structures, and a hot air balloon overlooking the play area from the adjacent climbable slide hillside. The Water Play Cascade area is situated directly next to the concessions building. It showcases a series of water play channels, runnels, and boulders winding down a concave bowl-like hillside into a central flexible water plaza, complete with a lower wading pool. Alongside these channels, you’ll find clusters of water play elements such as Archimedes screws, wheels, and rotating cups. Lastly, the Festival Plaza / Tornado Fountain area offers a flexible water plaza featuring a spiral of whirling jets intricately carved into a prairie hillside.

The visionary redesign promises to transform Exploration Place’s riverside park into a captivating, nationally acclaimed destination, seamlessly blending science-inspired play with the rich tapestry of regional ecologies and histories. With iconic features, this reimagined space is poised to ignite curiosity and spark wonder for generations to come.