It’s fun to be a kid! And few places celebrate the childhood joys of wonder and discovery more than Edventure Children’s Museum in Columbia, South Carolina. As the largest children’s museum in the South, EdVenture is also home to the “World’s Largest Child”- EDDIE®.
EDDIE is a 40’ (12.19m) tall boy that kids of all ages love to explore! Learning about the human body (inside and out) has never been this much fun! You can crawl through, climb up and slide down through Eddie, and even bounce around inside of his stomach. Created to celebrate the diversity of all people of South Carolina, Eddie serves as the entrance icon for the museum.
ThemeWorks designed, built and installed EDDIE® in nine months. Working from a conceptual design from The Haizlip Firm, LLC, our artisans sculpted Eddie in fiberglass, disassembled him and shipped the components to the museum site on flatbed trucks. At the site, he was reassembled and final finish paints were applied.
PROJECT DETAILS
Project: Eddie Play Structure
Designer: The Haizlip Firm
Client: EdVenture Children’s Museum
Size: 40’-0” (12.19m²) tall play sculpture
Photography: LeGrand Photography
Scope of Work: ThemeWorks provided design/build fabrication services for this 40’-0” tall interactive sculpture of a boy, including the structural steel supports, play structure, interactive exhibits, special lighting, sound effects, sculpting, and installation. Conceptualized by the Haizlip Firm and EdVenture as “the world’s largest child,” Eddie is a 17.5 ton hands-on exhibit that allows children of all ages to explore the human body. Kids can scale up Eddie’s vertebrae to get an up-close look at his brain and continue down through his body, exploring the heart and stomach before sliding out through the intestines. With a schedule of only nine months, the ThemeWorks team fabricated Eddie in our facility in sections and then reassembled him onto structural steel supports at the site.