You would think having built three indoor climbing gyms in major metropolitan areas previously, that the teams at BKB and VS would have seen and adapted to it all. But this location, which serves a different subset of New York City’s nearly 8.5 million residents, proved there were still many new challenges out there in order to deliver a new type of indoor climbing facility to an underserved community. It’s hard enough to design and construct any type of new business in a city like New York City, but it was incredibly important for the owners of Brooklyn Boulders to return to their roots and deliver their fourth location to a community they are already well-acquainted with. This BKB facility located underneath a downtown NYC high-rise building in the Queensbridge neighborhood specifically features a 25,000 sq. ft. of space, yoga classes, fitness programs, personal training, dynamic & collaborative co-working space, saunas, as well as an art gallery.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: When you build a climbing gym in beneath a NYC high-rise building, you have to utilize the space in the most efficient way possible. Brooklyn Boulders Queensbridge is the epitome of smart space design, and still offers a ton of climbing square footage for their customers, among many other lifestyle perks.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: It’s hard to top this super deep ARC wall bouldering cave we built at the Brooklyn Boulders Queensbridge location. This facility had challenging interior volume, and required non-traditional climbing wall design and manufacturing solutions.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: Being beneath a NYC high-rise building didn’t stop BKB and Vertical Solutions from designing and building rope-climbing ARC walls with substantial height.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: This picture details smart features like this mini-cave climbing wall setback, contribute to the variety of climbing square footage incorporated into this facility.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: Another cool view of the density of climbing at this BKB location and the planning that was required to not only build these indoor rock climbing walls, but to incorporate ingress/egress, fall zones and padding and vertical access to the multiple floors.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: The entrance to this location is pretty special. You don’t come into this space expecting to see all of the climbing area that they have, or the plethora of art on the walls, let alone all of the intricate details like this custom front desk we built for them.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: A cool part of the space, the elevator by the front entrance has climbing on the back side and from this level you can see how the rope-climbing walls were accomplished by starting below ground level and working upwards.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: A view looking towards the center of the lower level, standing next to the deep bouldering cave. Designing and manufacturing around the entire building’s support structure was challenging, but not out of our scope of capability.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: The base of one of the rope-climbing walls which starts below grand level in order to achieve the indoor climbing height.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: From this perspective, you can see just how complex of a floor plan and climbing wall plan the Queensbridge location had to have in order to maximize climbing area at the bottom of a NYC high-rise building. Lots of climbing areas separated by pathways connecting them all.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: The exterior design of the graphics covering the ground-level windows allow BKB branded logos to shine through and project onto interior surfaces.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: The view looking up at the elevator shaft with an indoor climbing wall on multiple sides, going up to the main entrance level.
Brooklyn Boulders - NYC/Queensbridge: Another view of the indoor climbing wall areas that were designed precisely to maximized climbing square footage and maintain good accessibility.
