If you are a parent or guardian, chances are you’ve frequented traditional playspaces marred by fluorescent lighting, outdated furnishings, and retro carpeting. Devoid of fashion and flair, these indoor corrals for children — be they bowling alleys, arcades, restaurants, or playgrounds — leave little to be desired. So, when Adventure Alley co-owners Amanda Neves and Sebastian Kennedy dreamed up a spot “designed for families, by families,” a new kind of experience was born.
“They had this idea to build a community-driven play space for both children and parents to enjoy. A place where everyone can come from their busy city life and feel a breath of fresh air,” said Jordana Leventhal, principal designer at Toronto-based LV Interior Design Studio. “There’s a lack of this in the market, and I think people are becoming more conscious of that. We need to keep both children and parents in mind through a user experience.”
Adventure Alley
Conveniently located at Dufferin and Dupont Streets in Toronto’s downtown core, Adventure Alley has been well-received since opening its doors to families in the fall of 2025. Scandinavian in feel, visitors are welcomed by natural wood tones and soft pastel colours as soon as they enter the space. With few straight lines in sight, children are encouraged through the design to channel their curiosity and immerse themselves in play. “We wanted all the lines to be wavy to invoke the children’s imaginations,” said Leventhal. Right off the bat, she says, children ask themselves “where can this line take me? How can I follow it? How can I escape from the environment that I’m in and come into a new one?”
Two multi-level playscapes sit in the main recreation area, stacked 19-ft. high in a stocky style reminiscent of Adventure Alley’s surrounding urban landscape. Positioned around them are two party spaces, tactile and sensory stations, and a digital room where kids can play interactive games. “Every area is very intentional for the type of play and age group that are to be in there. It’s about making sure that every child is enjoying the experience, and when they come back, they can have a new experience as well,” said Leventhal. “It grows with them.” Suspended above and sprinkled throughout are nature-based nods, including cloud lighting fixtures, treehouse-style nooks, a picket fence, and moon and star elements.
At its centre, Adventure Alley features a lounge where parents can work, relax, or observe their children. Unlike traditional playspaces that cater exclusively to kids, Adventure Alley was poised to appeal equally to caregivers from the start. The goal: “to think about them as a whole, [as] a full entity,” said Leventhal. “That’s how you attract people.”
While polished concrete floors occupy the entry areas, the design studio opted for comfortable, double-layer rubber composite flooring in the play areas. Rubber continues into the party rooms in the form of high-performance tile, while the walls favour ceramic tile and melamine cladding. A mural painted by local artist Justin Broadbent adds colour and interest, as do wallpaper, graphics, branding, and a unique abacus-inspired display.
Real maple is used for much of the furniture throughout. As for the millwork, a melamine product was selected for its close appearance to natural wood, and for its durability and wipeability. “We really needed to think about the sustainability of the space and the longevity of the materials, as well as the comfort and safety of the kids,” said Leventhal.
Fluvarium Lilypad Daycare Centre
Much further east, another project similarly challenges the conventions of traditional children’s design. The Fluvarium Lilypad Daycare Centre in St. John’s, Newfoundland is unlike usual childcare settings. Located in a 1980s environmental education building, the daycare’s architects needed to determine how best to retain the original character of the structure while ushering in a new mandate and purpose for the space.
The first challenge was to work with three branches of government — the city, province, and department of education — as well as the fire department, to determine how best to integrate a childcare facility on the top floor of a three-storey building that’s also used as a public museum. “Assembly and care are as far apart as you can get in the building code,” said Chris Woodford, architect at St. John’s-based Woodford Architecture, who led the design alongside architect Devan Burry and building technologist Keita Foley-Tanaka. “We spent about six months discussing this with government, and we had the entire building reclassified as a daycare.”
This proved to be a huge win for the design team. Not only did it set a precedent for the possibilities that can arise from collaborative conversations between designers and government-level authorities, but it empowered Woodford Architecture to approach the renovation with the respect and care it required. “Everyone respected the original building enough to bring it back. That’s something I’m proud of. Because often, it’s too difficult, or ego gets in the way and you want to make it your thing,” said Woodford. “We let the original building sing.”
The Fluvarium’s original timber structure, built around a large central staircase, was thoughtfully uncovered and left exposed amid the addition of interior partitions that creatively stop short of the ceiling. “We wanted to make a visible break between the renovation and the existing building,” said Woodford, who notes that the original structure is entirely angular. “Everything is square or rectangular. We decided that our intervention would be the walls that come in and don’t quite touch the structure, perforated with these round openings that look complimentary but different to the existing building.”
Woodford also notes that the change in building code allowed the design team to avoid the need for a new dividing wall between the public and private spaces, which would have destroyed both the project’s budget and the flow of the existing staircase, as well as introduced the need for additional entrances and exits.
Pops of colour in the classrooms compliment the calming tones of the white walls and warm wood ceiling, while natural light shines in through a cupola whose function — to bring light in — had been lost to the Fluvarium’s past renovations. In uncovering the original timber structure, Woodford and team were able to restore the cupola’s essential purpose. “Because the roof is so big on the building, and the way they had it divided, it was amazing how dark it got on the top floor of all places,” said Woodford. Coupled with the open staircase and interior circular windows, every child now benefits from the cupola’s light. “We were trying to make sure that every classroom could see it.”
A final, essential consideration of the daycare’s design was a connection to nature and access to the abundance of green space offered by the surrounding 3,400-acre Pippy Park. The Fluvarium, established by the Quidi Vidi / Rennie’s River Development Foundation in the 1980s, has long been committed to environmental education in protection of the site’s waterways and the species that inhabit them. By repurposing a wrap-around deck, the design team provided quick outdoor access for the daycare, while ensuring that the surrounding landscape could remain untouched for continued preservation and nature-based play.
At their cores, both the Fluvarium and Adventure Alley demonstrate a new, creative era in children’s design, as well as what can be accomplished when collaboration and vision collide.
As featured in the January-February 2026 issue of Canadian Interiors magazine.
