Two months after our Climate Shelter Residency with Placemaking Europe, we returned to Paiporta to finish what we had started!

During the intensity of our month-long residency in July, one idea never quite made it over the finish line: WaterPlay, a collaboration between Javier Molinero Domingo and Mimi Dearing.

Working in an area devastated by flooding, we wanted to explore how water could be reintroduced into the playground through play. After an experience in which water had been destructive and uncontrollable, WaterPlay invites children to encounter it on a completely different scale: something they can touch, redirect, contain and release. And, importantly, something to cool down with in Valencia’s increasingly hot summers.

Water begins at a hand pump at the top of the ramp before travelling through a series of channels and pools. Each pool has a small gate that children can open and close, changing the path and pace of the water as it makes its way downhill.

The structure becomes a kind of miniature Barranco del Poyo - the waterway that runs through Paiporta and overflowed during the DANA floods - turned into something children can experiment with and control.