Urban Gorillas

Urban Gorillas (UG) is a multidisciplinary team of urban enthusiasts who envision healthy and socially inclusive cities based in Nicosia, Cyprus. Emerging in 2013, fired up by the consequences of the global financial crisis in 2007-2008, UG geared their work towards a new understanding of public culture and public life. Following this incident, the essential development of a social critique that is a primordial aspect of public space, was missing. UG was formed as a reaction to the lack of publicness, at a time when democratic governance was under question and when civil society was in tatters. These conditions continue to have a prevalent and growing presence to this day.  

Since, our projects have been following the underlying idea of activation of the “Publicscape”, a word we embrace that expresses not only the activation of public spaces, but also, suggests the role of people as an integral part of the process. Publicscape offers a wider view of the public’s role and engagement that extends from public space understood both as a metaphorical and spatial term to public relations and community-inspired governance.

The relationship with the publicscape is an ongoing process, rendering actions that vary in scale, form, approach, and impact. Yet, the essence of every action remains fundamentally rooted in democratic values, where, through an exploration of diverse artistic forms, we trigger a change of spatial and social perceptions. UG co-orchestrates actions from an often bottom-up perspective by transforming ephemerally urban realms into public spaces. It negotiates between public and private, and often reverses these notions to transform spaces with unclaimed publicness into accessible urban hubs. This generates a razing of awareness for public space and prompts spontaneous, momentary urbanism, giving opportunities to people to immerse in these parallel realities, to reconnect with their everyday spaces, and be active participants for a better public horizon.

UG’s desire is to inspire communities to produce and manage urban spaces themselves through urban design, planned events or informal guerilla urbanism. Within this framework, UG aspires to set itself as a “middleground” between authorities and people, a proposition, we might say even our vision, for a permanent remedy for the governance of healthy cities.

For more information:

https://doi.org/10.32891/jps.v4i3.1223

Contributors: Urban Gorillas Team

Rene Carraz, Veronika Antoniou, Teresa Tourvas, Yiorgos Hadjichristou, Despo Pasia