Skatepark

The skate facility at Stuttgart’s Nordbahnhof consists of three building parts: shotgrete bowl, site-mixed-concrete plaza, and a hitherto unrealized two-storey reinforced concrete building, which covered the half-pipe and a youth club with a fibreglass roof structure. The design of the bowl is based on the bowls used in California for monolithic construction of pools. This allowed for a much more astatically pleasing and sophisticated design than is usually seen with pre-fab skate parks. The concrete characteristics of the sprayed concrete and reinforcement ratio were approximated German requirements and optimized in close consultation with the exporting company. Issues like buildability and cost had to be reconciled with other issues with issues such as shrinkage, settlement and stiffness distribution to minimize cracks.