Are High-Design Playrooms the New Frontier of the Amenity Arms Race
Some of Miami’s biggest new condo towers are being planned with well-heeled, worldly families in mind, with larger units, more amenities for the kids, and ‘service suits’ to stash the live-in nanny. A few incorporate a theme park’s worth of diversions (think of the soccer field, boxing ring, and jam studio at Paramount Miami Worldcenter or the mini water park, indoor/outdoor playrooms, kid’s gymnasium, and rooftop theater of 1010 Brickell, both under construction) while developers of other buildings are focusing on really tricked-out and designed-up playrooms.
Over at Reach and Rise Brickell City Center, the two towers nearing completion that will book-ending the $1.05 billion mixed-use Brickell City Centre megaproject, will have matching kids’ rooms decorated in bold bands of magenta, plum, turquoise, tangerine, and bright yellow. Looking like the offices of a progressive ad agency from the 1970s (so, totally psychedelic), these playpens will have several walls that “can be used for interactive, touch-screen games,” while other walls are left blank “for children to write and draw pictures,” according to the developer. There will also be a pirate ship, fire station and engine, and a multi-level castle.
Another playroom, at Brickell Flatiron, which just broke ground, is just as high-design, with abstract wooden trees standing on little abstract wooden hills. The Teletubbies-meets-a-cedar-closet look continues with a climbing wall, and orb-like light fixtures representing the heavens in this imaginary kids’ universe.
For the minimalist child (maybe the one who prefers an empty box to whatever mummy and daddy wasted their money on that came inside it) the Ritz-Carlton Residences Miami Beach, under construction, will have a painting studio. Kids are invited to paint on the walls, decorating the place themselves. At the Ritz though, the space is geared toward families as a whole. Parents can paint on the walls too.