CHEHARDA creates play, educational, and public spaces for cities, residential areas, parks, schools, museums, hotels, and private territories.

We join projects at various stages: we can develop a space from scratch, integrate into a master plan, implement a ready-made concept, or help update an existing territory.

We create individual spaces and do not work with catalogs of standard equipment.

Our practice includes courtyards of residential complexes, city parks, natural playgrounds, school territories, museum interiors, hotels, resorts, and educational and artistic projects. In each case, the task is different: somewhere we need to invent a space from a blank slate, somewhere — to fit into an existing environment, and somewhere — to preserve the author’s concept of another bureau or artist and turn it into a real object.

We work with the project as a whole: we research initial conditions, form a concept, develop architectural and working solutions, manufacture elements, organize installation, and accompany the object within an agreed scope.

A child does not use a space according to instructions. They choose a route, test heights, hide, return, observe, join others, argue, negotiate, and invent rules.

We create not a single predetermined scenario, but a field of possibilities.

In a good space, you can:

• Move fast and slow.
• Stay alone or be together.
• See others and disappear from view.
• Test yourself and feel safe risk.
• Repeat a familiar action or find a new path every time.
• Play out a plot, build, explore, observe, or just be.

Play is not the opposite of learning, rest, culture, or city life. It helps a child experience all of this through their own experience.

Nature gives a child an experience that cannot be replaced by a ready-made plastic form. Wood changes over time. Stone holds weight. Earth, grass, water, snow, shade, wind, and changes in elevation create different sensations, rhythms, and reasons for play.

We work with natural elements not as decoration around an object, but as part of the play action. Topography can become a route. A tree — a landmark and a meeting place. Shade — a shelter. Water — a reason to observe and experiment. Seasonality — a reason to return to the same place in different ways.

A natural environment makes play not only more diverse but also more connected to the real world.

CHEHARDA has been working with play, educational, and public spaces since 2014. The bureau grew out of the creative union of architects Darya Bychkova and Maria Pomelova.

During this time, CHEHARDA has implemented projects in residential complexes, parks, on embankments, in schools, kindergartens, museums, cultural institutions, hotels, and on natural and public territories.

The bureau’s website presents a wide portfolio of objects: play hubs in residential complexes, park playgrounds, interior spaces, objects for schools and kindergartens, educational projects, public and festival objects. The internal registry contains no fewer than 72 implemented objects, and a material published in 2024 about the bureau mentions more than 80 playgrounds and spaces.

We can work as the authors of the space or join a specific part of the task.

Territory research, concept, master plan, design, working documentation, production, installation

Play environment as part of a master plan, residential complex, park, school, museum, hotel, or public territory

Architectural, play, engineering, and production adaptation of another author’s idea

Manufacturing of individual objects, logistics, installation, handover of documentation and warranty obligations

Participation of the team at key stages of implementation to ensure the project is preserved in material and on-site

Warranty obligations and the ability to contact us regarding an already operating facility

CHEHARDA creates its own projects, but also works with architectural bureaus, artists, studios, curators, developers, city teams, and master plan authors.

In such projects, we do not replace someone else’s idea with our own. We figure out what is essential in it, translate it into working, play, structural, and production logic — and help it become a real space.

This is how we worked with Megabudka’s concept for the funnel slide at the JAZZ residential complex, with Artemy Lebedev Studio on the "Polar Explorer’s Glade" in Murmansk, and with artist Irina Korina on the "Below the Grass" play installation at GES-2.

Architects, play and children’s environment specialists, landscape specialists, working documentation architects, engineers, designers, manufacturers, installers, project managers, procurement specialists, documentation specialists, communication specialists, and marketing specialists work on projects.

The team works from different cities and joins the project at the right moment. That is why CHEHARDA is not a single office or a linear structure, but a system of competencies that allows us to carry a complex object from the first idea to a finished space.

CHEHARDA’s projects have received professional awards including Archwood, Martela EdDesign Award, Build School Project, 100+ AWARDS, and other industry prizes. Among the recognized objects are "Giant Mushrooms," the all-season "Fox" slide, "Ripening Quarter," "Orlandia," "Old Lighthouse," "Dragon," "Creaking Stumps," and the educational spaces of the E. M. Primakov Gymnasium.

For us, awards are important as external confirmation of quality. But the main criterion remains something else: whether the space becomes part of the local life and whether people want to return to it.

You can come with a site, a master plan, a concept, renders, a finished project, an existing territory, or a complex object that needs to be realized.

Tell us what you already have and what result you need. We will help determine the next step.