Dissertationsprojekt (laufend)

 

Boulderhallen und Bouldergebiete.

Räumliche Dimension des Trend- und Natursports Bouldern.

 

Bouldering Halls and Bouldering Areas.

Spatial dimension of trend sport bouldering

 

Bouldering is a modern climbing sport with many benefits for an attractive life. Exercising promotes health due to the sporty movement up to a therapeutic mode, cause of the mental challenge and social interaction. Aim of my thesis is to analyse the role of architecture – and space in general – within this new trend sport to increase the potential of bouldering with a sustainable planning.

 

Design principles become necessary, cause the boom of bouldering facilities in the last years raised many new unanswered questions, concerning safety, legal regulations and uniform standards, experience quality, sustainability, et cetera. Especially the increase in popularity of bouldering lead to overcrowding of sports facilities aggravating some of the questions and creating serious problems meanwhile. In the bouldering hall this restricts the quality of the visitor‘s experience and could lead to an increased risk of accident,

which is further intensified by the many inexperienced beginners. In the nature sports, where the boulderers climb without monitoring in an area with low infrastructure, over-frequency and the lack of knowledge about the right behaviour in nature already have serious consequences for the environment.

 

Because in bouldering the room itself becomes the sports equipment, architectural solutions have to be developed on the basis of the interaction between athlete and room. For this purpose, the sportive demands a boulderer makes on the room are examined. The demands on the environment, in turn, are influenced by changing motives of the athletes as well as by the changing effect and perception of these newly emerging sports environments.

 

This dynamic development is examined on the basis of a historical and spatial theoretical literature research as well as on a spatial analysis of the different types of bouldering facility. In a specially developed test procedure, a combination of sports science and architectural psychology methods is used to examine and fathom the interplay between bouldering athletes and space.