In the city of Viborg, Denmark, studio EFFEKT has transformed the former windmill factory – the Streetmekka Viborg Build – into a skatepark and youth culture.
The 3,170-square-metre building offers a wide variety of facilities for self-organised sports, as well as social spaces for local youth. These include a huge skating bowl, basketball courts, maker workshops and DJ facilities.
“We have taken the most generic building of them all – the industrial manufacturing warehouse – and transformed it into a vibrant cultural hub for street sports and culture targeting the youth not fitting into or not drawn by traditional organised sports organisations, ” explained Mikkel Bøgh, chief operating officer of EFFEKT.
The former prefabricated concrete and corrugated steel windmill factory occupies a 2,000-square-metre site.
The outside of the building is newly wrapped in a translucent polycarbonate skin, intended to make it appear light and welcoming, and also differentiate it from its industrial neighbours. In addition, this skin will serve as a giant canvas for local artists to display and project their art.
Large sliding doors open the cathedral-scale central factory space to the outdoors.
Beyond them, the space is laid out to like a streetscape. The centre’s various functions are arranged in relation to their specific requirements, such as spatial quality, daylight, materiality and temperature zones.
Before the renovation, the building resembled a mass-produced warehouse or factory typical of the late 1960s and 70s.
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