Nómada Estudio Urbano Builds a Pergola Playground at 95 Centimeters

At 95 centimeters above the ground — roughly the eye level of a three-year-old — downtown El Paso now looks like a desert playground. Nómada Estudio Urbano, led by designer Miguel Mendoza, has installed Desert Playgola, a temporary pavilion that converts a traditional pergola into an interactive playscape along W Main Drive.

The City of El Paso commissioned the project through its Museums & Cultural Affairs Department (MCAD) for the Chalk the Block public art festival, held October 3–4, 2026. The installation sits beside La Nube, the city's interactive children's museum, and turns an ordinary pedestrian stretch into a terrain of passages, surfaces, and objects.

What does the design borrow from the desert?

Plenty. The Chihuahuan Desert supplies the project's visual vocabulary: prickly pears, ocotillo plants, and the region's distinctive topography. Freestanding sculptures resembling prickly pear cacti are assembled from interlocking medium-density fiberboard (MDF) pieces, putting desert forms literally within children's reach.

The pavilion is built around a timber framework supported by concrete block bases. Hanging iridescent curtains and colorful MDF figures fill the overhead plane, and some hanging elements come together to form a face — giving the structure an almost character-like presence on the street. Recycled wooden pallets form raised platforms covered in artificial turf, introducing changes in height and texture. From a distance, the pavilion reads as a colorful figure in the urban landscape; up close, its parts become things to navigate and touch.

Why design from a toddler's height?

The approach follows Urban95, an initiative by the Van Leer Foundation that asks architects and urban planners to experience cities from the height of a three-year-old. Rather than treating children as miniature adults, the framework considers how scale, accessibility, and sensory experience shape a child's relationship with public space.

For Nómada Estudio Urbano, that perspective produced an environment with no predetermined routes or activities. The name itself — 'play' plus 'pergola' — signals a structure that offers shelter while leaving room for curiosity, imagination, and improvisation.

The sensory layer does real work. Wind animates the iridescent curtains. Sunlight projects shifting shadows across the ground. Artificial lighting transforms the pavilion after dark. Children can pass between hanging elements, climb low platforms, examine textures, or simply pause — there's no prescribed sequence to follow.

What does this change for El Paso?

The installation extends La Nube's brand of playful learning into the public realm, giving the festival's pedestrian route a different rhythm and inviting visitors of all ages to share one space. The pavilion operates simultaneously as public art, sheltered gathering place, and informal playground.

For the studio, the project reflects a broader ambition: making cities more responsive to children without separating them from everyday urban life. Nómada Estudio Urbano sums up its premise simply: a city that plays is a city that cares. Here, that starts by bringing the city a little closer to the ground.