Jörg Florenz makes children’s hearts beat faster: With his company Erlkönig-Design he creates play worlds that fascinate children. In schoolyards, in day care centers, but also in amusement parks, these are often used by the little visitors. It all started 25 years ago. “At the time I was one of the first in the area, almost nationwide, to think in the direction of nature,” remembers the original Liedberger.
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He already demonstrated his technical talent as a small boy. He planned and built his first tree house at the age of nine in his parents’ garden in a 100-year-old pear tree.
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Info
Materials such as robinia and clay for objects
Company Jörg Florenz has been working full-time with people playing since 1996. In 1996 he founded the company Erlkönig.
materials His play objects are made of natural, durable and ecological materials such as robinia, oak wood and clay. The durability and the play value of his projects are particularly important to Jörg Florenz.
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Playing and the appropriate space for it are vital for him and not a luxury, says Jörg Florenz. He used wood from the region for his playground equipment, felled many a tree himself and employed five to six people. He now only relies on freelancers. And something else has changed over the years: the good German oak is no longer the most resilient tree.
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The ruby from North America is now in the resilience class one, its wood is even more durable than oak. The 55-year-old has never counted how many projects he has completed so far. It could have been around 500. Sometimes he was just the source of ideas. The freelance playground equipment designer has always remained true to wood as a material, even when plastic began its triumphal march.
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Jörg Florenz can still remember his first order very well: It was about play equipment for the day-care center in Mönchengladbach, which his daughter attended more than 25 years ago. Giving children joy in playing is a key motivation for Jörg Florenz. His goal is to inspire children with his creations so much that they forget everything around them.
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Daddling on the smartphone is no substitute for this. Among other things, the 55-year-old has created fairy-tale witch houses with niches for sleeping and areas for playing for daycare centers. And he still likes to use his tools again and again. He is currently busy building a tree house for a Waldorf school.
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Among other things, he enriched the Zoom world of experience in Gelsenkirchen with his ideas. There he designed a suspension bridge in the grizzly enclosure. In Jüchen he planned and built play equipment together with the children. There are also attractions for children in amusement parks in the Netherlands, which Jörg Florenz came up with and partly implemented himself.
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As an artist, he created, among other things, the “human children” – these are sculptures made of oak wood with faces. His thirst for action is being slowed down by the ongoing pandemic: Jörg Florenz would like to give sculpture courses again and exhibit his own works and those of other artists on his property.
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His hobbies include motorcycling. Jörg Florenz is married, has a daughter who lives in Mönchengladbach and a stepson who is currently in Mexico.
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How to become a play equipment designer? This question certainly cannot be answered in general. Jörg Florenz had first completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter in Korschenbroich, before taking care of the backdrops and stage sets at the Krefeld/Mönchengladbach municipal theaters. He did his master’s degree and studied design in Aachen. The 55-year-old lived in Flensburg, Baden-Baden and Mönchengladbach. Jörg Florenz only returned to Liedberg three years ago.
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