The Gathering Place

Richter builds America's largest playground in Tulsa, Oklahoma

On September 8, the largest playground in the USA to date was opened to the public in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with a gigantic, emotional opening ceremony.
Over the previous months, several hundred pieces of playground equipment from Richter had been installed on the 27-hectare park site. These include six gigantic towers connected by eight bridges - one of which spans an incredible 18 meters at a height of six meters.
The designer Günter Beltzig, who has been working closely with us for over 30 years, designed a ship, an elephant and the Rondell, a seating circle made of concrete elements with a very special atmosphere and acoustics, for Tulsa.
The "Tulsa Towers", which were specially designed for the project, are 14 meters high and offer a unique view of the surrounding area from their top platform at a height of ten meters.
They have already caused a stir in their place of origin and production, Frasdorf in Upper Bavaria, where the "Tulsa Towers" were erected on our company premises as a trial in June 2016 after completion and only then, after dismantling, were they shipped to the USA in a total of 32 sea containers together with the other equipment intended for the major project.
Two similarly sized Richter towers are already in place at another prestigious large-scale playground in the USA - Maggie Daley Park in Chicago.
Other special features that will delight the millions of local, national and international visitors of all ages expected to visit Tulsa each year include Richter's first vertical water playground, an eight-metre-high tunnel slide and a wooden elephant almost nine meters tall, which is twice the size of a real African bull elephant.
The monumental dimensions of the installed equipment already point to a unique project that the team believes will change playground construction in the USA for the better in the long term.