News

When Carmel Clay Parks & Recreation set out to create their first indoor play park, they had one bold ambition: to make Carmel, Indiana, a true “playground mecca.”

That vision became reality in June 2025 with the grand opening of the Monon Station Indoor Playground – a $3 million wonderland designed to fuel imaginations, test limits, and spark joy in children of all ages.

At the heart of this dazzling new space is the Luckey Climber – a soaring, leaf-like maze of platforms suspended within a steel-and-cable frame. Kids scramble upward through a kaleidoscope of colour, following illuminated pathways before sliding triumphantly back down to the floor. It’s more than just playground equipment: it’s a climbable work of art that blurs the line between sculpture and adventure.

The mastermind behind this creation is Spencer Luckey, president of Luckey Climbers and son of the late architect and sculptor Tom Luckey, who pioneered the concept of abstract climbing sculptures in the 1980s.

From their Connecticut studio, the Luckey team has installed more than 220 Climbers worldwide, but Monon Station is something special. As Spencer put it during the ribbon-cutting ceremony: “The light-up climber you see here today is the actualization of a fantasy we’ve had for many, many years. This is no more and no less than the greatest piece of playground equipment we’ve ever made.”

What makes it different? Light — but not just any light. While some previous creations have featured illumination, this is the first time that a Luckey Climber has been brought to life with dynamic, individually-addressable LED pixels, transforming the structure into a living sculpture that glows, shifts, and shimmers in sync with the energy of play, powered entirely by ENTTEC lighting control.

The project, installed in just six weeks, uses 66 ENTTEC OCTO Mk2 pixel controllers – one for each climbing platform – alongside ENTTEC LED Mapper (ELM) software.

The LEDs are recessed directly into the platforms, allowing the structure to glow with evolving playlists of colour and movement that kids respond to in real time. Every platform is powered by its own OCTO, all mapped together in ELM. This setup gave the team the freedom to treat each panel as a building block while still designing cohesive, large-scale lighting looks that transform the climber into a living canvas.

Dynamic lighting isn’t just a decoration here, it’s part of the play itself. Patterns shift and moods change, encouraging imagination and exploration on every visit. Spencer Luckey noted that incorporating programmable lighting gave the team “a new way to express their creativity,” expanding the possibilities of what an interactive playground can be.

Behind the magic was a skilled and passionate team. Brooks Gotham, the project’s lighting infrastructure guru, specifically requested ENTTEC OCTOs for the build, praising their ability to handle such a large-scale system and their proven reliability.