Walltopia, a leading climbing wall manufacturer, has designed, engineered, produced, assembled and route-set the tallest climbing wall in the world.
The 80-metre tall climbing wall is built onto the side of CopenHill, a waste-to-energy plant that features an urban recreation centre in Copenhagen. CopenHill, or the Amager Power Plant, was designed by Bjarke Ingels at the architectural company BIG.
A challenging design
The imposing building meant that Walltopia had to “find the right balance between appearance and and functionality – the goal was to create appearance matching the impressive building architecture while designing wall topology that offers supreme climbing experience,” Vasil Sharlanov explained. Sharlanov, the head of sales at Walltopia, worked on the design of the climbing wall.
The climbing wall is split into four pitches, each roughly 20 metres high. The lowest wall is the easiest, with the difficulty increasing as you reach the top of the building. Each pitch has a sloped edge at the end, which allows for comfortable anchoring.
The climbing wall starts on a small platform above ground level. This helps to stop people from climbing without supervision.
Working with plexiglass and fiberglass
The Walltopia team didn’t want to block light from entering the building, so the company used plexiglass and fiberglass.
Project manager of the wall, Ivan Natov, explained that “Plexiglass is complex to work with, especially if you need to bend it, but thanks to the technological advancements we’ve been investing in at our factory and the skilled engineers at Walltopia, this was problem that was easily solved.”
The construction of the wall was made from stainless steel to survive the harsh Scandinavian climate. Eight Walltopia workers constructed the wall using a platform that worked like an outdoor construction lift. This was used to mount the 55 tons of steel and 24 tons of fiberglass and plexiglass onto the side of the building. The total climbing surface measure 1,200 square metres.
Walltopia route-set the climbing wall in Spring using rope access.
Walltopia has a wide range of active entertainment products for all levels of skill, including their Ropes Courses, Fun Walls, Artificial Caves, Boulder climbing walls and Ninja Courses that make physical workouts fun and diverse. The company was the first to present on the market the Rollglider by Safety Engineering – a roller coaster-zip line that offers a free flight experience in a completely safe environment.
