Kefi Studio

In 2019 I was brought in to build something that didn't really have a category yet -- what I came to call a hybrid studio: a full broadcast operation and an in-store experiential space, fused into one 26,000-square-foot place built for kids. Not a set. Not a store. Both, at the same time.

You walked into a main hall of "caves of play" -- odd-shaped white rooms, each filled with projectors and content, each its own world. A glassed-in lounge let parents work and take calls while their kids disappeared into it. Low counters held the toys out in the open, LEGO-store style: pick anything up and play with it as long as you want.

Threaded through all of it were the Kefi Studios themselves -- stages with an interactive camera on a boom arm we called the kefi jib, theatrical truss and moving lights, projected content, and effects down to sound and bubbles. Kids stepped in front of the camera or behind it and made their own videos. Every stage was wired for capture: full camera, full audio, a broadcast studio built into the space that could push and pull content to and from any other corner of the 26,000 feet. A kid builds something in one room, and it can be live on a stage across the building.

Retail, play, performance, and broadcast, running as a single system -- and the whole thing had to feel, to a six-year-old, like the best place they'd ever been. Getting the infrastructure and the joy right at the same time is the hardest build I've taken on, and it's the one I'm proudest of.