George M. Davison, founder and CEO of Davison Design & Development, stands at the entrance to Inventionland. Mr. Davison came up with the idea to have his designers work in a creative Disneyland-style environment. Click photo for larger image

By Anya Sostek
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Clay Carlino works on a pirate ship. With cannons that shoot smoke. Surrounded by a moat. Inside a warehouse in RIDC Park in O'Hara.

The ship is where Mr. Carlino captains a team that designs toys and games for Davison Design & Development, which designs products both for individual inventors and for corporations.

Another group of employees who work on infant products have their desks inside a 26-foot by 16-foot crib, under what might be the largest baby mobile in the world -- they're checking with the Guinness Book of World Records. And the folks designing outdoor equipment work out of a rock cave with a fake deer and a giant fish lure, while a tree house is home away from home for the team that designs tools.

The pirate ship, crib, rock cave and tree house are just four of the 15 fantastical sets that comprise the company's offices, now known as Inventionland.

Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Designers in the sewing area of Davison Design work in the Crafty Cottage in Inventionland. Click photo for larger image. Video: The creative work environment

The "magical wonderland" is the work of company founder George M. Davison, who believes that creativity is best fostered in an imaginative environment.

Many of the designs harken back to his childhood -- the concept behind the office is not unlike Story Book Forest at Idlewild Park, which Mr. Davison, 42, visited frequently as a child. "Growing up, it was one of my favorite places to be," he said, watching the indoor waterfall he built outside the rock cave.

"Why does it have to be that you can only get these feelings at an amusement park?"

The project started about two years ago, shortly after the company moved into an 80,000-square-foot warehouse in RIDC Park. Mr. Davison found that Dustin Foust, an animator at the company, was able to translate the ideas in Mr. Davison's mind into sketches on paper.

To some degree, Mr. Foust, 27, thought he was just humoring his boss when he came up with the child-like designs for new 'offices.' "Who would have thought we'd actually build a giant boat?" he said. "It was being built and I still didn't believe it."

	Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Offices for Inventionland are in the castle "Inventalot," where managers have daily meetings at the large round table in the center. Click photo for larger image.

Most of the construction work was done in-house, to the tune of several million dollars. A movie special effects expert who had worked on "Ghostbusters" and "Gremlins" consulted on which paints not to use because they shrink foam, and other tricks of the trade.

Mr. Davison believes the creative environment already has borne results, and Mr. Carlino agrees. Despite the fact that toys sometimes fall into the moat around the pirate ship, he loves his new digs.

"If you lose that element of fun, you're not being as creative," Mr. Carlino said, noting that he's hoping to equip the cannon with both light and sound in time for Inventionland's official debut party on Nov. 8. The on-board lounge already has two 42-inch flat screen televisions hooked up to an XBox 360 -- all the better to stir the creative juices.

	Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Designers at Davison Design & Development research products as they sit on the porch of a house in "Inventionland" at the RIDC Park in O'Hara. Click photo for larger image.

Mr. Davison attributes the design of the Hover Creeper, an air-compressor-powered mechanic's creeper for which the company won a 2006 Industrial Design Excellence Award, to the new creative environment in the automotive set, known as the Inventionland Motor Speedway, complete with a suspended racetrack for remote control cars.

The company also had less positive news this year, when the Federal Trade Commission ordered it to pay $26 million in restitution to inventors who said the company misrepresented itself.

In Inventionland though, where there's a balcony named Optimistic Outlook, that topic isn't discussed much.

"You'll never find a negative moment in Inventionland," said Mr. Davison. "It is not permitted. ... It's like a dreamland."

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Oct. 28, 2006) An unidentified woman referenced in this story about Inventionland as a movie set designer who had flown in to consult on construction actually drove to the site from her current home in Mt. Lebanon. Also, her expertise is in movie special effects, not set design.