One of our favourite projects, Avles Simperilipsis (Inclusive Schoolyards), which you have embraced as much as we have, was selected as one of the 61 finalists out of over 1450 applicants for the New European Bauhaus Prizes for 2023! The schoolyard is the first public space for children. However, it is usually a vast space where children (mostly boys) tend to play football and chase in the center of the place, while children who don’t want to participate in such activities stay in the periphery. An inclusive schoolyard, is a schoolyard shaped for the diverse needs and desires of all children. Through suggestions on how they could creatively and pedagogically use their time in the yard, the students became little researchers, gathered all the suggestions of their classmates, and made suggestions on how they wanted their schoolyard to look like. In the second phase of the project, the architectural interventions were implemented in the yard, always taking into consideration the proposals of the students themselves.
In this video you can see some snapshots of the project as we experienced them, but mostly as the children live and enjoy them every day!