Trickz Park

The vision of our foundation originates from our personal experience within the culture and community of urban sports. The goal was to create a place where different urban sports can meet, inspire and learn from each other. To work towards a place where these different communities and subcultures come together on a common ground.

What sparked this project were the requests of different sport groups: Skaters that needed their park to be fixed and freerunners in need of a facility because there was no place to practice their sport. As one of the members in the foundation owns an urban sports facility near an old skatepark, the idea of a public park that integrates different sports started to develop. During the design process, we reached out to the municipality and different stakeholders. This collaboration went so well that the four of us decided to start a foundation to support and develop urban sports.

Our own experience in different urban sports and a direct connection to the user group via the urban sports facility proved to be an advantage in this project. It served as an opportunity to observe and learn about possible problems and the wants & needs of different groups. The aim was not only to understand the user group, but also to let them participate in the design process.

Several co-creation sessions were organized during the design process as we consider this one the best ways to translate the desired interaction into a suitable concept. Different elements within the sports were analyzed during this process: moves, combinations, lines, levels and techniques amongst others. Our close connection to the urban sports community served as direct feedback and gave the opportunity to quickly iterate and optimize the design.

Considering that the sports park was a project to be built in public space, we had to work together with different experts. These included city planners, landscape designers and a contractor. The main challenge was managing and shaping the design towards a feasible and viable project. Interestingly, working with different stakeholders and especially the municipality revealed that ‘urban sports’ was a fairly unknown territory at the municipal level. Even more reason for us to reach out as a foundation and help develop this new field. Working together with experts as well as users allowed for a comprehensive understanding of the different processes within a project and how to deal with them.

In the final phase we sat together with the contractor to work on making the design production ready. Another great advantage was that our contractor worked together with a company that designs and build skateparks. They redesigned the skate area using our design as inspiration. The end result was a complete design were we achieved our goal to bring the different sports together. All in all, working together with experts as well as users allowed for a comprehensive understanding of the different processes within a project and how to deal with them.

During the construction only minor changes were made to solve some drainage issues. Another lessons learned was that construction workers sometimes interpreted the construction drawings differently. Especially since the field of urban sports is so new, we decided to have someone on the ground to keep track of the progress and prevent any further mistakes. Not only for financial reasons, but also for the safety of the user group and usability of the park.

All in all, the realization of the project went really well and an opening event was organised to celebrate this milestone. In the program we had demos for freerunning, skateboarding as well as music and spoken poetry. As one of the initiators and designers, it was great to see different people together on a common ground.