The Municipality of Kongsvinger is home to one of the first next-generation urban sports parks in Norway. The Strandpromenaden has been brought to life with kids and adults running, jumping, climbing and skating along the riverside. It’s a beautiful space that manages to be both relaxing and exciting.
The Kongsvinger Skateboard Association approached their municipality with the request to build a skatepark. At the same time, the Municipality was awarded a grant of almost NOK 4 million from the Ministry of Culture for an Innovative Active Facility. They turned to Aktiv Park for their expertise, and the three parties worked together to establish a site and develop the project.
Strandpromenaden, next to Konsvinger Ungdomskole (Kongsvinger secondary school), provided a well-placed and scenic location, on the town’s riverside path. This choice of site is a clear demonstration of the Municipality’s high regard for its young people and active spaces.
Aktiv Park were commissioned to develop designs for the entire Strandpromenaden, extending the remit from skatepark to include a wider range of urban sports - parkour, climbing, trampolining and free play - along with social spaces and landscaping.
The project’s strong contextual response stems from the application of Aktiv Park’s creative logic to the hidden complexities of the site - rights of way, flooding issues, underground utilities - along with existing trees and complex funding issues.
Gentle pathways were woven through the site. These create activity zones and increase connectivity through the site. Their layout manages changing ground levels, protects existing trees and flood zones, and ensures the space is sustainable and accessible.
Inspired by the water lapping at the river’s edge, the discrete activity areas were drawn out along the site and allowed to flow past each other, creating large shared thresholds to promote social interaction.
The understanding of spatial and social interactions between the different user groups was a vital consideration in developing the layout of the park, underpinning the entire process from inception to detail design.
Parkour, for example, combines running and climbing movement with a skateboarding’s approach to urban forms. Situated between the climbing and skatepark areas, the parkour area seeks to draw participants from different disciplines together, increasing social interaction and diversity. Its form appeals to both climbers and skaters, and it provides a great vantage point over the climbing boulders and back into the skatepark.
The material choices reinforce the social ambitions of the project, providing a diversity of feel and multitude of ways to use the space - the smooth man-made concrete waves and steel structures interwoven with natural granite and soft landscaping - somewhere to play, to relax and watch; passing by, or staying all day.
At the opening of the facility, the representative from the Ministry of Culture, Ole Fredriksen, expressed that all the conditions for an innovative activity facility were met in an exceptionally good way. «I would like to give credit to Aktiv Park, who’s shown great initiative. Aktiv Park has realized Kongsvinger municipality’s vision of a next-generation urban sports park that includes all the municipality’s inhabitants regardless of age, sex and physical abilities»
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