Project Name: PLAYSCAPE

Organisations: Urban Gorillas, Gardens of the Future 

Target group: Children aged 3-12

Project Duration: 01/2026-11/2026

Total Funding: €20,000

The project “Playground of Imaginative Possibilities – PLAYSCAPE” aims to create an experiential playground where children use their bodies, senses, and imagination to explore and shape the space around them. Unlike conventional equipment-based parks, we imagine this playground as a living laboratory — a place where children can learn, invent, and co-create new ways of playing. The location of the project is in the old and abandoned railway lines in Kaimakli at Synergasias Street.

The project will unfold in three stages. It begins with hands-on design and storytelling workshops where children and families build models, and explore ideas for what a playground of imagination could be. These ideas will then be shaped into a design that draws on inspiring precedents — from Isamu Noguchi’s sculptural landscapes to Aldo van Eyck’s human-scaled playgrounds — reimagined for the Cypriot context. The final stage will bring communities together for co-construction and celebrating the new space.

Our goals are to foster children’s creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration; provide inclusive access to high-quality play; and cultivate appreciation of public space as a shared cultural resource. The project will also serve as a pilot model for municipalities and schools across Cyprus, demonstrating how participatory design can produce inclusive, educational, and imaginative public spaces.