The Home Front: An arcade basketball game not destined for your garage

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Vancouver industrial designer Calen Knauf says he designs “everything.”

“Really, anything that needs to exist, I’m someone that would design it,” he says.

This statement holds true, as he recently designed the Home Court Arcade Basketball Game for Vancouver brand Reigning Champ. They’re selling this game for a cool $50,000.

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It has reportedly already been sold to a few celebrities, including a “really famous Canadian rapper,” and is definitely more suited to your living room than the garage.

Expensive and difficult to make

“On any design project, you come up with a bunch of different concepts and scale them down to two or three to show the client,” says Knauf. The design Reigning Champ chose was not one Knauf says he initially intended to pitch because it was expensive and risky.

“I said it’s not really a suggestion, but I just want to show you. I showed Mike (Belgue), and he was like, ‘That’s the one.’”

The basketball game design, conceived as a classic pop-a-shot, features a digital panel that tracks scores and declares the winner. Unlike typical garage versions, this game is also a design statement, showcasing high sophistication.

“We got into full production mode about six or seven months ago,” says Knauf.

Making the thing: Mario Paredes

The beauty of this basketball game lies in the harmonious relationship between the materials it’s made from, says Mario Paredes, whose studio, Workbench, manufactured the game according to Knauf’s design.

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The game is constructed from dimensional panels of plywood with solid wood edging. The solid wood edges blend seamlessly with the plywood, making the transitions appear as a single line. The texture of the wood wraps around every surface, which was hard to achieve, says Paredes.

Glass as the main act

The game’s structural integrity is maintained by thick, heavy, hardened glass panels connected laterally with stainless steel connectors. These glass panels hold the game’s entire structure, giving the appearance that the wooden panels are floating.

“This was very challenging to fabricate because, with glass, you can’t mess around,” says Paredes.

“The perforations in the glass need to be perfect. The stainless steel connectors on the wood parts need to be perfectly aligned in order to assemble it.”

To achieve this, they created dummy panels to simulate where the glass panels would go. When the “glass people” came, these were carefully removed and replaced with the glass panels, one at a time.

“It was a massive production,” says Paredes.

Show stopper

The first prototype of this game was displayed at Vancouver’s Inform Interiors for about a month, where it got quite a bit of attention, says Paredes.

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“There’s been some international buyers. Right now, we’re starting the production of 10 units. It’s a pretty cool concept,” he says.

Reflections on Vancouver

Knauf was born and raised in Vancouver. He lives about 12 blocks from where he grew up.

“I’ve never been anywhere that’s made me want to live there more so than here,” he says.

Being an industrial designer based in Vancouver can be challenging at times because you don’t have access to the manufacturing facilities you would in places like Europe, particularly Italy, says Knauf. The high cost of living in Vancouver means getting things made locally can be very costly.

But he has no intention of leaving. It also allows him to indulge his other big passion: off-road touring.

“I spend a lot of time off-road touring. Some people would chalk it up to car camping, but what me and my friends do is a lot more intense than that. We’re constantly moving — hence touring. Driving roads that haven’t had tire marks on them for a really long time. Or roads that aren’t really roads.”

“I can make design work here, but I can’t make thousands and thousands of wild country materialize in other places,” he says.

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