Urban Gorillas (UG) is a non-profit organisation run by a multidisciplinary team of urban enthusiasts who envision healthy, creative and socially inclusive cities. UG was established in Cyprus in 2013 and has since been active in sustainable city-making through urban regeneration, community engagement, and the implementation of socio-cultural and artistic projects in public spaces.

Urban Gorillas aspires to trigger citizens to collaboratively envision and create sustainable and inclusive spaces, through the creation of diverse toolkits for engagement. Our projects enrich the urban topography with socio-artistic interventions that respond to the current political, environmental and social challenges. UG’s activities include the creation of digital and non-digital platforms to facilitate discussions, exchange of views with citizens concerning community-related problems.

The organisation shares expertise in arts and architecture, urban design and planning, landscape design, environmental engineering, economics, communications, cultural project management, as well as a love for innovation …

A Collective European Effort To Maximise Creative Use Of Rooftops.
How can we utilise the space above our heads?

In densely populated areas in Europe, thousands of square kilometres of potential (public) space lie under-utilised and unrecognised as a great urban resource. This realisation joins organisations from nine different cities in a collective effort to unlock the potential of the European ‘roofscape’ (i.e. the combined area of flat rooftops in cities). The European Creative Rooftop Network (ECRN) – supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Commision until 2024 – seeks ways in which rooftops can incubate creative solutions for the social, economic and environmental challenges faced by Europe in the near-future. Urban Gorillas from Nicosia is proud to be one of the founding partners.

The Urban Gorillas is an interdisciplinary team of urban enthusiasts who aim to activate community spaces, inviting the local and international community to reimagine Cyprus' capital from the rooftop level and create alternative spaces for social interaction and creative expression on top of the buildings as well as in them. The interconnectivity of the ECRN ensures the benefit of international inspiration for Nicosia’s development and enables the sharing of the Urban Gorillas’ local knowledge with European counterparts.

On December 1st 2021, the partner organisations met in Antwerpen on top of the MAS-building, a publicly accessible rooftop. The nine partner cities differ in culture, climate and city planning but seek the similarities within the European roofscape and exchange their knowledge of this shared heritage. Next to Nicosia, the ECRN partners are (alphabetically): Amsterdam, Antwerpen, Barcelona, Belfast, Chemnitz, Faro, Göteborg and Rotterdam.

Discover more:
https://ecrn.city