PLAYGROUND Welcome Little Stranger
A playground designed by Walter Van Beirendonck at C-mine, imagined together with children
What happens when a fashion designer designs a playground? And what happens when children are invited to imagine the world it could create?
For PLAYGROUND — Welcome Little Stranger, C-mine and play curator Laurens Mariën invited fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck to create a playground inspired by his imaginative universe. The project takes inspiration from The Playground Project by Gabriela Burkhalter, which explores the history of playgrounds designed by artists — from adventurous, experimental playgrounds to artistic interventions in public space.
Today, playgrounds are often shaped by increasingly strict safety regulations and limited budgets, leaving less space for artistic and experimental approaches. PLAYGROUND reopens that space: a playground can also be an artwork, a place for imagination, discovery and unexpected encounters.
Emma Ribbens joined the project as play and participatory designer.
Designing with imagination
Together with children from Genk, we went looking for a little stranger from outer space.
We started with questions, stories and wild ideas:
How do aliens live? What do they eat? Do they have rules? Who is the king? How do they travel? And what kind of music do they listen to?…
Then we got to work. Using cardboard, tape, scissors and lots of imagination, the children started building their own alien world. Spaceships, strange creatures, houses, landscapes and places to meet emerged from the cardboard.
By building and playing, new ideas kept appearing. A cardboard construction could suddenly become a spaceship, a hiding place or the home of an alien. The children could try things out, change them, take them apart and build them again.
This hands-on process allowed us to discover not only what the children imagined, but also how they wanted to move, play and interact within this new world.
Their drawings, stories and cardboard experiments became part of the design process and helped shape the ideas behind Welcome Little Stranger.
For us, this is where participatory design becomes playful: we don't just ask children for their ideas, we create a space where they can build, test and imagine possibilities themselves.
One of the most exciting parts of the process was translating Walter Van Beirendonck's imaginative sketches and ideas into something that could actually be built and experienced as a playground. Moving between imagination, artistic vision, children's perspectives and the practical realities of making became an important part of the design process.
A playground as an artwork
Welcome Little Stranger invites children to enter another world. There is no fixed way to experience it, no story that needs to be followed and no single way to play.
You can climb, hide, explore, invent, imagine — or simply wonder who that little stranger might be.
Play becomes a way of experiencing art.
And imagination becomes part of the artwork.
PLAYGROUND — Welcome Little Stranger
C-mine, Genk
From 7 February 2026
For children from 4 years old — and anyone who still likes to play.
CREDITS
Artist: Walter Van Beirendonck
Curator: Laurens Mariën, Louise Osieka
Construction & installation: Fisheye
Location
C-mine, genk (BE)
Date
2026
Photography credits
Selma Gurbuz and Annika Wallis