Last month Redwood Plastics partnered with Lanefab Design/Build in Vancouver, Canada – recent winners of the Arthur Erikson Memorial Award for Emerging Design – to work on an entry for a playhouse, to be exhibited at the Pacific National Exhibition. The idea for Lanefab’s ‘Fab Forest’ design was forest made of wooden blocks where kids could be creative, rearranging the trees and playing with them however they would like. At the conclusion of the PNE, the playhouse will be sold to benefit BC’s Children’s Hospital.
Redwood was approached to help with a washer solution. The washers were to be placed between each set of branches and had the requirements of being slick enough for kids to easily move the branches, while being strong enough to handle rough play and even being climbed on. While this was a playhouse, in the interest of performance and safety, engineering plastics were well-suited to the design. Sometimes an ideal solution just presents itself because recycled (repro) UHMW not only had the strength and abrasion resistance required by the application, but was also recycled – which turned out to be beneficial for Lanefab’s design.
The project was a success. From the pictures you can see the ‘Fab Forest’ was a popular attraction. Some pictures of the construction and finished playhouse:
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