As part of the Climate Shelter Residency Project, the former skatepark was transformed into a huge sandpit: part playground, part artwork and a space for open-ended play.

Across the concrete area, Mimi designed a series of large-scale murals using shadows traced from plants at Valencia's Botanical Garden, creating a visual identity from abstract plant forms. At the centre, Francesco Caneschi created a giant snake-like structure that twisted through the sand, becoming a table, climbing frame, meeting place and slide.

Instead of filling the sandpit with conventional toys, we created play boxes of simple objects for children to experiment with. Pipes, sieves, scoops, wooden spoons and containers were selected in the colours of the playground and left deliberately open to interpretation: tools for digging, building, carrying, pouring or whatever else.

Once the sandpit opened, children soon found possibilities we hadn't planned! The loose pipes became tools for climbing the steep sides of the old skate bowl, before children slid back down into the sand. And the snake was climbed over, crawled under and gathered around.

Combining artwork, a sculptural play structure and loose tools and materials, the old skatepark became a landscape children could continually rearrange. Instead of prescribing how each element should be used, we created different starting points for play and let children take it from there.

The sandpit was one of the most heavily damaged areas, requiring a huge effort just to even prepare the concrete for painting. The pictures below hopefully highlight just how much work is involved in bringing a place back into use.