In The News

Playrooms must be well organized with learning centers where everything is in place so that when kids want to create, build or pretend, they have everything they need right at their fingertips. The Smart Playrooms team, Karri Bowen-Poole and Chris Simpson, share these four reasons why a playroom encourages success in school…

“In addition to a 20-foot-wide rock-climbing wall, monkey bars and a mini basketball court, the new playroom has an arts-and-crafts area with a walk-mounted chalkboard, a media lounge with hanging-pod swing chairs and an under-the-stairs reading nook with string lights and a beanbag chair. There is also a hanging trapeze, as well as a built-in ladder, a climbing rope, swings and plenty of brightly...

This bright and bold playroom not only accommodates children of different ages and with different interests, but it is also pleasing to the eye, something every parent can appreciate. Designed by the team at Smart Playrooms and Project Playroom led by founder and CEO Kari Bowen-Poole, this was designed in a home in Scarsdale for boys ages 4 and 7 and a girl aged 12. The task was to create a vibran...

When Karri Bowen-Poole designs custom playrooms, her room concepts begin with her musing about how a room will engage and nurture young minds. Of course, paint swatches and whimsical kid-centric themes are part of her detailed design process, but the founder of Smart Playrooms believes play and learning are interconnected. “It’s the teacher in me...

When Karri Bowen-Poole is at work, all she thinks about is play. It goes with the territory, though: Bowen-Poole designs one-of-a-kind children’s playrooms for a living. The former educator designed this multi-space, multi-functional, multi-fun playroom in collaboration with a Greenwich mother of three. The client wanted it to be bright (a big ask since it’s in the basement), gender-neutral, and t...

For playroom designer Karri Bowen-Poole, founder of New York–based studio Smart Playrooms, the emphasis on incorporating more active forms of play into children’s spaces was a response to something she noticed around her, having worked in education for a decade prior: kids were increasingly over-scheduled in extracurriculars like competitive (and...

Ashley George commissioned Bowen-Poole to design a playroom in their new house with monkey bars, swings, foam pits, a climbing wall, and a slide. Now the children run into the new playroom each day after school. Ashley George’s 5 years old loves challlenging herself on the monkey bars. “She is so proud of herself” said George.

The idea of Smart Playrooms came to me in the middle of the night, when I was brainstorming other ways of using all of my educational and teaching experience outside of the traditional classroom. I am the innovator of the term “Educational Design” and really started the movement of designing playrooms from an educator’s viewpoint and including challenging physical play kid gyms inside, like monkey...

“Karri Bowen-Poole, a professional playroom designer who founder her business, Smart Playrooms, in 2012, started off mostly as an organizer who sorted and labeled toys, but in the past few years, she’s been working with clients who ask her to create permanent, indoor playgrounds for their kids, with outrageous features such as monkey bars , trpez...