Inside a Bonkers Plan to Build a 5-Story Skatepark

A proposal takes the best parts of skating in a parking garage and combines them with the convenience of a more traditional skatepark.

A parking garage is nearly the ideal location for skateboarding. The inclines, the rails, the concrete parking bumpers---they’re all there just waiting to be repurposed as a playground for grinding. And then there are the cars and pedestrians and security guards, who want nothing more than to be, like, a total bummer and kick you out.

Good news: British firm Guy Hollaway Architects has designed a bonkers-looking building proposal that takes the best parts of skating in a parking garage and combines them with the the convenience (and legality) of a more traditional skatepark. When completed---Guy Hollaway hopes in early 2017--- the multilevel building in Folkestone, England, will be a massive sporting complex where people can skateboard, rock climb and ride BMX bikes indoors.

The skatepark’s unorthodox design was born out of a common urban constraint: lack of space. Folkestone’s only skatepark is closing later this year to make room for residential housing, and the developer, Roger De Haan, wanted to find a place to relocate the park. Having just bought a plot of land, De Haan entertained the idea of moving the park there, only the plot of land was too small to house everything a decent skatepark needs. So they decided to look up. “When you start thinking about it in terms of multi stories, the opportunity changes,” Hollaway says.

Guy Hollaway

Renderings show the 10,800-square-foot space split into five floors, with three of them acting as the main skating hub. The team is consulting with professional skaters and skatepark designers to refine their concept. One idea, they say, is to replicate features from famous skateparks from around the world inside the new structure.

Currently, the plan calls for a lobby-level café and entrance with an undulating ceiling that reflects the skating bowl above. The bowl on the first skate-able floor is pierced by columns (for structural support), creating architectural obstacles that Hollaway says can be used for tricks. The second skating floor, a flatter flowpark, is best for free skating and bike riding, while the third has more of a street-style design, with ramps and rails. The entire building is covered in a permeable mesh, which allows daylight to seep in while keeping rain stay out. Hollaway says the metal is designed with a bit of give, so if skaters happen to run into the wall, "they'll bounce back off."

There's a 36-foot climbing wall, which can accommodate 18 climbers at a time, and behind that is arguably the most compelling piece of the design. Wrapped around the interior edge of the building is a ramp that will act as a pathway from the upper to lower skating levels. In this plan, a skater could conceivably take an elevator up to the third floor and skate her way down to the bottom, making stops along each level to create a satisfying flow.

A vertically positioned skatepark isn't common (the designers claim this is the first of its kind), and indeed you can see how a plan like this could be an engineering and safety challenge, given the heft of the concrete, the undulating floors, and the kind of activity it will have to support. Hollaway says his team is still exploring the potential of what a vertical skatepark could be, and they're currently readying the proposal for city approval, so it's not a done deal quite yet. Still, the concept is likely to exist in any young skateboarder's dreams.