Designing Climbing Walls
When I go to design a building, or a climbing wall, or whatever it might be, watercolor isn’t my go-to medium like it is for some other Architects. In my case, this was back at the very beginning of lockdown in April of 2020, and one of my daughters wanted to do watercolors with me as I was thinking and doing some sketches, so guess what? My sketches that day have watercolor on them…
My early design sketches of the BKB Eckington climbing + fitness facility.
I use sketching to help turn ideas into visualizations. It’s always an effort to try and get a thought out of my head, so that we can work it out and test it to see if it’s got legs.
In this particular case, I’ve been watching as photos are being released of the last climbing gym I designed while working full-time at Brooklyn Boulders, in collaboration with Vertical Solutions, and Stack+Co. The response seems to be quite positive, and it’s a good moment to discuss some of the underlying thoughts that led to the final product that you see today.
Brooklyn Boulders Eckington, Photo: Reddit
This is a good example of a project that follows my Development Philosophy, where we started as a small team, working over the course of years to test many different design options and layouts, before finally dialing it in to match the business goals, and then documenting, detailing, and executing the project with a much larger team.
Note: As an aside, this is exactly the process I like to use when working with clients, and formally offer in my “Launch” program, because I’ve found it works extremely well, and works anywhere in the world as a remote design and development strategy.
Back to the climbing wall design specifically. In this case, back to the watercolors, which were looking at an idea of a bouldering wall (no-ropes) that nestled under a mezzanine level, and formed a flat top edge that became the railing/ wall on that floor above. This is a simple and clean way to have the climbing and Architecture work together, and I’ve been trying different details like this over the last ~10 years, as I’ve worked on these facilities.
My early sketches of the long wall, with 3 caves and connecting to the mezzanine above.
From there, the surface of the long wall itself is based on 3 features that were thought of as recesses that have been cut out of the long wall. They are 3 different caves and overhangs that have some hints from real boulders that I’ve seen, and they are different depths to work around the building structure and produce variety.
Each of the 3 features themselves are symmetrical, but transition to each side in unique ways. They are also colored differently, to help distinguish them further, and emphasize the intent which is to have the outer surface to be relatively smooth and consistently overhanging, while these darker caves recess themselves under the mezzanine above while avoiding existing columns and other building components.
Photo: Reddit
To me, the thing that I think makes the facilities that I work on unique, is that the Architecture and the climbing walls are all designed at the same time, from the very beginning. That’s largely because my very first job out of college was designing climbing walls for a wall builder, and now that I’m an Architect (and it’s 20 years later somehow), I have a deep understanding of what is needed to make both halves extraordinary, and I naturally look to maximize the potential of each, specifically by having them work together so that the result is greater than each part alone.
Source: LoopNet/ Gustavo Moser
For the 2 central boulders, that area also evolved over years, as the building was worked out by the developer (working with developers from the start is a key aspect here, and shows why getting started early with test-fits and visualizations is a VERY good idea). There were different iterations, but eventually these 2 “icebergs” seemed to show promise in these sketches, and we ended up going in that direction.
Watercolor design sketches
These 2 “icebergs” are very angular, and are intended to be striking features that are visually and functionally interesting from all sides, but particularly from the street side, where you can look into the facility to see these freestanding boulders very clearly. That also sets them up to be great for viewing while people are climbing on them, but also for events and competitions, where there are clear lines of sight to the major features from the street side of the room.
3d Model views that show the unobstructed views from the street side
The walls themselves use color to help distinguish the feature geometry, but the surface curvature of the walls is also something that’s important to consider, because curved surfaces can look nice, but they also can make it difficult to attach the handholds.
That’s why I generally use a mix of flat surfaces with curved transitions, that can either be truly curved surfaces, more specifically constrained ruled surfaces, or hyperbolic surfaces that can be panelized into a series flat panels, so that you have an approximated curvature with flat surfaces.
Note: This is a whole area of mathematics called Descriptive Geometry, which was developed extensively in the 18th century, and was trying to first help illustrate complicated geometry on a 2d sheet of paper, and second, to help manufacturers and builders understand how to build something that’s on a piece of paper.
When you look at the images below, you can see the testing that’s being done to see what should be truly flat, and what could be a different type of curved or approximated-curved surface.
The linework in the left image shows the underlying flat-panel geometry in the design model, for 2 of the caves.
It’s important to be specific with our geometry, because it really helps us understand what we’re doing, and what the construction options would be. When we make a “blob” or something that gets spit out of a computer, it may be easy to 3d print as a model, or make into a pretty image, but the reality of building these shapes often replies on “props” (as I like to call them), and lots of triangulation, because you’re just trying to reverse engineer the thing to make it stand up in the real world, once it leaves the zero-gravity world of the computer.
Massimiliano & Doriana Fuksas, New Milan Trade Fair, Photo: Arch Daily
Interestingly to me, Frank Gehry’s early work did rely on ruled surfaces for buildings like Bilbao, because their design process relied on physical models (paper and actual materials, not computer design software) to figure out designs, and then getting them into the computer to help engineer them. You can see that Bilbao for instance, is a series of ruled surfaces, which means that it’s a series of straight lines that rotate as they move across the surface.
Frank Ghery, Bilbao
Just as an aside, before computers, Architects and engineers like Marcel Breuer and Pier Luigi Nervi would use ruled surfaces because they were directly related to how concrete formwork would be made (with a series of straight boards). They would incrementally make curves across the formwork, to create a surface that’s buildable and describable without too much complication. You can see the lines in the finished concrete, which come from the formwork that was used.
Pier Luigi Nervi
Coming back to climbing gyms, the real point is, that these wall surfaces are used so specifically by the climbers and the routesetters that attach the handholds to the walls, that the way we use curvature is incredibly important. I can’t think of a more nuanced way to interact with a geometric object, than to wrestle with it while climbing!
View from the inside of the main cave, Source: LoopNet/ Gustavo Moser
This is also is an opportunity to see what we can do, when we restrict ourselves to geometry that we can more accurately describe, and then translate into built objects that not only look inspiring, but function extremely well.
There’s also a crazy inclined wall that lets you climb for ~50 feet without a rope, but that’s another story…
The giant cave over the ramp, Photo: BKB
Thank you for taking your time to read, and please reach out with thoughts or questions.
Gratefully,
-Chris
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