The Onassis Foundation creates a new playground at Avdi square

The new children’s playground installed by the Onassis Foundation in Metaxourgio –donated to the City of Athens as part of our OnAthens initiative, a comprehensive strategy for Athenian public space interventions– enriches the urban fabric of Avdi Square, and recognizes the importance of both culture and play in our daily lives.Contemporary cities such as Athens are constantly seeking out meeting points and creative hubs for renewing ties with their citizens. This need is most pressing when it comes to playgrounds, which are the beating heart of neighborhoods and communities – a place to let off steam, join together, and connect. For children, they are a place for play and free time spent within a safe environment. For adults, they are a place for community interaction.

Continuing its comprehensive strategy for interventions within Athens, the Onassis Foundation is adding yet another link in a chain of children’s playgrounds, this time installing –in partnership with the City of Athens– the first play area on Avdi Square in the Metaxourgio area. In this instance, the playground has been designed in response to criteria that include functionality, safety, and respect for the areas that bound the space. In essence, it offers a playful long journey with various offshoots, so that each child or group of children can –depending on their age– select the kind of activity that interests them. There is a separate area for toddlers, and all the apparatus is installed on poured-in-place safety flooring, with a central, stabilized earthen-ceramic pathway. The new pieces of apparatus form a small “forest” in the heart of this urban area: complex, composite treehouses (with multi-level towers, slides, a spiral staircase, a bridge, and a climbing wall), musical storytelling balls, spring-mounted play equipment, balancing apparatus, a four-seater spring-mounted seesaw, interactive panels for learning numbers and playing logic-based games, two-seater swings, and a cradle swing for toddlers.The playground on Avdi Square is the latest project to be realized as part of a comprehensive Onassis Foundation intervention strategy that places a particular focus on activating local urban communities. In partnership with the City of Athens, we have already completely refurbished the playgrounds of the 39th Youth Center (on the corner of Sarkounidou Street and Kasomouli Street, in Neos Kosmos) and the 60th Youth Center (on Heldreich Street, in Dourgouti Park), installing modern equipment (including for persons with disabilities), new safety flooring, and new play apparatus. Next in line was Logginou Grove: striving for a more eco-friendly, “green” approach to the urban identity of the Mets neighborhood, the Foundation decided to fully fund and deliver the refurbishment of its playground, installing contemporary equipment that is also suitable for persons with disabilities, as well as new TÜV-certified play apparatus featuring natural materials, designed for children of all ages.

And our work won’t stop there. Firm in our belief that Athens has a need for well-designed playgrounds, so that its young inhabitants are free to discover for themselves the value of group play and of letting off steam, plans are now in place for Ragkava Park, right under the Acropolis, with funding approved for the installation of yet another playground.