Vytautas Gečas & Vladas Suncovas

Railscapes

Railscapes is a three-year community-driven design project by Lithuanian designers Vytautas Gečas and Vladas Suncovas, transforming an abandoned sawmill in the small town of Švenčionėliai into a new cultural and social hub.

Once part of Lithuania’s railway industry, the sawmill site had stood unused for decades. Through a series of small-scale interventions created in collaboration with local residents, the designers reactivated the space with mobile furniture built on the same rail tracks that once served the sawmill.

Over three consecutive summers, Railscapes evolved through hands-on making and community participation. The first installation, BarCoupé, is a mobile bar that slides along the tracks, used during public gatherings both indoors and outdoors. The following year, the designers returned to build a pizza oven, which soon became a social magnet – bringing people together around food, music and shared experiences.

In the project’s final phase, a collection of movable seating structures and tables was added, including a skateboard-shaped “island” that children can push along the rails. These pieces, characterized by their railway-inspired shapes and red metal accents, create a playful yet coherent aesthetic that connects the sawmill’s industrial past with its revived cultural role.

Railscapes reflects a practice of contextual and social design, where objects are not static artefacts but active tools for participation and place-making. By engaging with local memory and material context, Gečas and Suncovas turned a forgotten site into a dynamic landscape of movement, community, and collective creativity.