Ideas to transform city spaces

Building Trust International recently announced the winners for PLAYscapes, an international design competition that challenged participants from all over the world to propose their ideas to transform neglected city spaces into interactive places of fun for local communities.

The aim of this competition is to show how creatively we can make cities fun places with opportunities for interaction and play, stimulating people’s imaginations and making them want to get involved and experiment with new things.

Competition winning entry: “Cape Town Gardens Skate Park" Cape Town, South Africa

The competition-winning project, "Cape Town Gardens Skate Park" was designed by a multidisciplinary team from the City of Cape Town, in South Africa, and a high level of involvement and consultation with local residents and the future users of the park. The project proposes an intelligent re-use of space transforming an under used and blighted underpass into a community led skate park. In addition to presenting a strong concept, this project can be applied immediately and adapted to different sites, creating a positive impact to the local environment and enhancing the social dynamic of the community.

Honorable mention: "Plant A Ball Parks" USA

Over 500 entrants participated, with many of their projects highlighting the use of sustainable materials and the importance of redevelopment and adaptive reuse in their local cityscapes.

Besides the competition winner, the results include one student category winner, and nine professional category honourable mentions with proposals for cities all over the world, from Melbourne to London, Mumbai or Lisbon.

Honorable mention: "Bom(PLAY)" Mumbai, India

In the Student category, a team from Lusíada University of Lisbon, Portugal, won with their entry "Bring a Pal and Have Fun" which proposes to redevelop an empty and neglected city space by building furniture equipment made with euro pallets, a material that is structurally sturdy, inexpensive and easy to find anywhere in the World.

Winning Student category entry: "Bring a Pal and Have Fun” Lisboa, Portugal

The jury included representatives from Building Trust International, Project for Public Spaces, BMW Guggenheim Lab, Landscape Architects Network, 3Space, Neon Stash, Land8, and academics and professionals from architecture and landscape design.

More at: www.buildingtrustinternational.org