The Dozing Duck at Center Parcs Sherwood Forest

This collaboration has transformed the former Country Club into The Dozing Duck gastropub, which now features a one-of-a-kind sensory indoor children’s play park.

The design was created to deliver children and their parents together to the magical area in and around the pond that lies next door to the pub. The play brings you deep underwater, clambering upwards to the surface and up into the reeds surrounding the 'pond'. The clever use of lighting, including vibrant LED lights, and precisely positioned spotlights create a dynamic and visually captivating environment for each of the three interconnected locations.

The play consists of three primary towers, two of which take you through all three layers of play narrative, and the third being the nest. This features a giant sensory duck egg pod at the farthest point in the site, which provides an inclusive goal for guests to aim to achieve.

The structure has been meticulously crafted to spark curiosity and imagination by bringing together the individual elements. These work in harmony to ensure that the space is both playful, inviting and appealing to guests of all ages.

Creating the Play

The biggest challenge of the whole project was to create the play from the space that was formerly a squash court. This gave us the exact footprint to work to, but also inspired the duck pond concept. It's not often the space we are working in has more height than floor space.

The bird life at Sherwood Forest Center Parcs is a defining characteristic of the place. The beautiful ponds that sit across the site are host to a whole range of bird life that also wander freely around the village making it a memorable part of people's holiday.

With this in mind and the location of the new gastropub in the heart of the forest and alongside the biggest duck pond, the proposal was to create a play scheme that brought the pond to life, both under and above the surface. The design focused on the three main layers within that habitat from the bulrushes of the ‘ponds’ edge, out onto the waters surface and down into the underwater world below!

The first illustration started bringing the idea to life

Looking at vertical layers for something like a pond suited this space well, and reinforces the pub's new identity. One key consideration was the vantage point we were creating for those sat in the restaurant, with a cross-sectional view of the play.

You can see how the space was mapped across the three levels from these simple illustrations.

The Water's Edge (Restaurant level

The Water's Edge is primarily designed to create an accessible/inclusive route, with the pay off at the end of the trail being the egg pod. It also serves as a key circulation route for the more adventurous looking to explore the pond floor or climb amongst the reeds.

Playing within the various habitats of the water’s edge where visitors of all ages and abilities can navigate their way through the giant bulrushes and along the ‘wavy walkway’ on the back wall of the play space reaching the duck nest and egg pod. Slide out of the nest to the pond floor, with the Gobo lighting over the slide, giving a sense of entering the water. To set the scene we also used painted effects to give the impression of going below 'the water line'.

At the end of the accessible wavy walkway, there's a giant duck egg sensory pod, which is intended to provide a warm and pleasant experience. Alongside this is a beautifully sculptural babel drum percussive instrument. When played by guests, it creates an ethereal sound, and finally, there is a hidden subwoofer to create gentle heartbeat sounds to complete the living, watery theme.

Among the Reeds (Above restaurant level)

The ‘among the reeds’ play adds height and perceived risk to the play, in order to create relevance for older guests. In this space, adventurers can imagine themselves scaling the giant bulrush towers of the pond edge moving from one to the next through the net tunnel set high above the pond floor. The addition of this new level not only fully utilises the height available within the space but seeks to both to challenge older visitors and provide a something for younger visitors to aspire to in future visits.

The Pond Floor (below restaurant level)

Explore the ‘sandy’ bottom of the pond floor - a maze of crawls spaces, dens and nooks and crannies. We've used layers of feature lighting to add to the feeling of being submerged below the water (and restaurant) level in the caverns below the main play structures.

To create an interactive scavenger hunt game we used a series of cnc'd fish and other critter's that were hand painted and fitted around the fitted structures.

Once this design scheme was agreed, we carried it through into CGI's which show the smaller details and the way the lighting begins to define and separate the areas into three more distinct levels.

The Dozing Duck

The Dozing Duck is a gastropub located within the Sherwood Forest village of Center Parcs. Open from 09.00 until 22.00, It was created as part of a £4 million transformation of the former venue (previously named Foresters’ Inn) to create a more elevated, family-friendly dining experience and sits in a waterside setting, offering a relaxed atmosphere suitable for families, friends and couples.