Carve: 25 Years of Innovation Transforming Our Public Spaces

What is your background?

Elger Blitz and Mark van der Eng founded Carve as a design and engineering office. Initially focused on skating facilities, it has grown into a multidisciplinary firm specializing in play, sport, and skate spaces. Elger, the lead designer with a background in architectural engineering, brings a cross-disciplinary and innovative approach to designing urban spaces with a special focus on play.

What are the qualities / weaknesses necessary for success in your profession?

Carve is a design and engineering studio that has been creating innovative public spaces that foster social connection through play for over 25 years. Our designs are unconventional, yet fully buildable. Throughout the design process, we prioritize creativity while our engineers work closely with us to find unique solutions that bring our concepts to life without compromising the original vision. We are committed to creating exceptional places that people of all ages, abilities, genders, and backgrounds love, remember, and want to revisit. Success for us is when the projects stand the test of time and are still in full use many years after completion.

What are the specifics that make the creation of public spaces so unique and captivating?

At Carve, we see play as a vital component of life. Our designs prioritize both challenge and safety. We set aside preconceived notions of play that rely on directive activities and limit interaction options. Instead, we develop multifunctional spaces that foster possibilities for play and facilitate the unexpected. We prefer to work from an abstract point of view, creating playable landscapes and multi-use interventions that kids can utilize in different ways, always giving them the space to imagine creatively new possibilities. These settings bring people together and form places where everyone can feel at ease and discover new things.

How do you “playfully connect society” through public spaces? Can this concept work for other typology of projects and how?

Deeply rooted in understanding the principles of play, sport, and leisure design, Carve delivers precise, often small-scale interventions that positively impact the entire surrounding area. In our designs, we encourage play and foster connections by allowing users the freedom to engage with the space in their own way. We avoid overly directing activities, believing that when spaces are open to interpretation, users can truly make them their own through imagination and according to their needs.

What makes CARVE unique in the way it carries out its projects?

In our view, every project deserves a unique approach, aligning with the client’s wishes and the architectural context. At the same time, we believe that the true measure of a project’s success lies not only in its design but also in the quality of its construction. Our team’s diversity (from landscape architects to product engineers) allows us to work across all scale levels and to be involved in every phase of the building process, from planning to final touches. We draw on our extensive technical knowledge and experience to carefully plan and prepare the construction process, including technical specifications and cost estimates. In this way, we can ensure that our designs are executed to the highest standards.

What's the Dutch touch in your projects?

Our Dutch influence shines through in various ways: from our expertise in designing with water, seen in our Rotterdam projects, to a focus on simplicity, practicality, transparency, and directness. While our work often embodies these Dutch characteristics, some of our more unconventional designs might seem anything but typical of the Netherlands.

Can you give us 3 projects that illustrate best your know-how and specificity?

• Discovery Slides at Changi Airport in Singapore exemplify our ability to overcome technical challenges through creativity and extensive construction knowledge. It is a large construction, measuring 18 by 17 meters and standing almost 7.5 meters tall. It was constructed in three separate pieces, with the slides serving as the primary structural cores of the whole fabrication.

• Tophane Park is a playful installation integrated into a historic park in Istanbul, highlighting our innovative approach to blending traditional craftsmanship with modern techniques. To realize the double-curved, smooth stone sculpture, we collaborated closely with a local manufacturer. By combining advanced 3D digital methods with the expertise of skilled local craftsmanship, we successfully transformed our vision into life.

• The Floating Park, a 350-meter-long linear park in “het Rijnhaven” in Rotterdam, demonstrates how innovative ideas can address the future challenges of urban environments. In response to rising water levels and the scarcity of green spaces in our cities, we designed a ground-breaking park that floats over the water, adapting to the tidal level, harsh wind conditions, and salty water. The project is phased in three stages; the first one is already operative, and it is built in modules. This approach maximizes its flexibility and future uses.