HUGGIES ARE FAMILIAR PLAYTHINGS
Huggies reimagines the playground as a living, breathing community of forms — large-scale sculptural figures that children instinctively want to climb, rest against, and explore. Each piece is designed not just as play equipment, but as a welcoming presence: rounded, human-like silhouettes that evoke comfort, companionship, and a sense of belonging.
Importance of Familiarity
At the heart of Huggies is a simple truth: children play more freely when they feel safe. The softly anthropomorphic forms — generous curves, embracing postures, and approachable scale — signal warmth before a child ever touches them. These are not obstacles to be conquered, but figures to be befriended.
The palette is carefully curated to feel joyful without overwhelming — muted sage greens, dusty lavenders, warm stone, and bursts of cobalt and golden yellow in the signature terrazzo sphere toppers. Color is deployed intentionally: ladder rungs punctuate the structures in playful contrast, guiding small hands and feet upward with visual rhythm and confidence.
Materials That Age With Grace
Cast in textured concrete with terrazzo-inlaid spheres, Huggies is built to endure seasons, weather, and generations of play. The material palette bridges the natural and the crafted — sitting comfortably alongside grasses, gravel, and urban greenery without competing with the surrounding landscape.
Nature as Co-Designer
Planted borders soften the base of each sculpture, allowing native grasses and groundcover to weave through the installation over time. The result is a playground that grows more beautiful with age, embedding itself naturally into the neighborhood it serves.
From the toddler perched confidently on a low curved rung, to the older child scaling a towering sphere with outstretched arms, Huggies offers layered challenge and discovery at every level. No child is excluded and every figure offers a foothold, a seat, a place to pause and take in the world.
Huggies transforms the playground into a place children don't just visit, they return to it like an old friend.
We played with 3D renders and variants of materials and used simulated activity to determine scale relationships and final sculpture finishes.
Monumental Joy
Three oversized candy-inspired characters: a bold red gummy bear, a cobalt blue caterpillar, and an emerald green puppy dominate the plaza in high-gloss chrome finishes that catch sunlight, mirror the sky, and stop every passerby in their tracks.
Each figure is a fully interactive climbing structure in disguise: the bear invites scrambling up its rounded torso, the caterpillar's segmented body anchors a staircase climb to its back, and the puppy frames a slide that sends children swooping back to ground level. Connecting them all, a low-slung yellow stepping disc trail threads across the plaza floor, accessible to the very youngest players and irresistible to every age in between.
The effect is pure spectacle with serious play value: sculptures bold enough to anchor a public space, yet designed from the ground up around how children actually move, explore, and imagine.
Selected Works
HUGGIESPlacemaking
FFTT: Design Truck on WheelsProject with Studio O+A
SMILEYS PARK TOTEMSPLACEMAKING
PARK PEOPLEPLACEMAKING + Bike Parking