Playworld®, a leading commercial playground equipment manufacturer, today announced that Quito™ (pronounced KEE-toe), its new freestanding net climber, was named a winner of a prestigious GOOD DESIGN® Award.
Presented by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, the GOOD DESIGN Awards program has honored “the most innovative and cutting-edge industrial, product, and graphic designs produced around the world” since its 1950 inception.
The daring climber, inspired by Quito, Ecuador, the world’s second-highest capital city and the closest to the equator, is a towering 15.54 feet (4,74m) tall, allowing kids to climb, balance, and teeter their way in, over, and through the structure. With multiple points of entry, Quito includes an easy passage to the center core, as well as a cozy space underneath.
“Our extraordinary Playworld design team crafted the Quito climber to be visually spectacular and broadly inclusive, welcoming thrill seekers and the less adventurous alike,” said David Sheedy, vice president of global sales for Playworld. “We are thrilled with the reception Quito has thus far received, honored to receive this noteworthy recognition by the GOOD DESIGN Awards, and proud beyond measure of our wonderful designers. This award is for them.”
Quito includes bells at the top and ground levels that provide an opportunity for social game play for all types of playground adventurers. Users can hang out inside its suspended core, which offers a sense of enclosure, a sensory bell, and colorful triangle windows. The core interior's triangle roof is reachable by scrambling higher, offering an increase in climbing challenge.
Quito is available as a standalone product or in conjunction with Playworld’s Mighty Descent, an 8-foot-tall (2,43m), extra-wide, innovative slide that allows multiple children to revel in the joy of sliding together. Mighty Descent is the first of its magnitude and the largest one-piece rotomolded slide in the world. It’s large enough for the entire family!
The GOOD DESIGN program emphasizes quality design of the highest form, function, and aesthetics. Founded in Chicago by the former MoMA curator Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., together with such pioneers in modern design as Charles and Ray Eames, Russel Wright, George Nelson and Eero Saarinen, GOOD DESIGN honors the achievements of the best industrial and graphic designers and world manufacturers for their pursuit of extraordinary design excellence. Every year, designers and manufacturers from approximately 50 nations are honored for their singular achievements in producing hallmarks of contemporary design.
To learn more about Quito, visit Playworld.com/Quito.