Above Hamburg: when a parking roof becomes a place to play

Hamburg’s first rooftop padel club shows that creating new sports space doesn’t always require finding new land. Sometimes we simply need to use the city differently.

Imagine arriving for a game of padel in Hamburg. Instead of heading towards a traditional sports park, you enter a parking structure and make your way up to the sixth floor. There, the concrete suddenly gives way to five panoramic padel courts, a terrace and views across the city. People are playing, others are having a drink and, as the afternoon turns into evening, the rooftop gradually becomes a social meeting place.

This is Cielo Sports Club, Hamburg’s first rooftop padel club. It is an impressive place to play sport, but what makes Cielo particularly interesting is not what happens on the courts. It is what happens underneath them.

Cars are parked below. People play padel above.

That simple combination says something important about the way we could design increasingly dense cities.

A club built around more than sport

Cielo was created by brothers Filip and Tim Katschker, who wanted to develop the kind of urban sports club they felt was missing in Hamburg. Their ambition went beyond adding more padel courts to the city. They were inspired by long summer days, spontaneous matches and the social moments surrounding sport: playing together, meeting people and staying for a drink afterwards.

That idea shaped the club they created on top of the parking structure at ModeCentrum Hamburg. The rooftop now accommodates five outdoor panoramic courts, changing rooms and showers, equipment rental and a shop, as well as a terrace and bar. The location can also be used for corporate events and brand activations.

This mix is important because it changes the role of the sports facility. Cielo is not designed as somewhere you arrive, exercise and immediately leave. Sport provides the reason to visit, but the atmosphere and social functions encourage people to stay.

For Sports Vitality, that is an increasingly relevant principle. If we want sport and physical activity to become a natural part of everyday urban life, we should not always separate them from everything else. They can be integrated into the places where people already work, shop, travel and meet.

Cielo shows what that can look like.

The real innovation is underneath the courts

Across Europe, cities are becoming denser while the number of claims on public space continues to increase. We need housing, mobility, greenery, water storage, energy infrastructure and places for recreation, sport and social interaction. Traditionally, all those functions compete for the same square metres at ground level.

That makes finding space for new sports facilities increasingly difficult.

Hamburg demonstrates another possibility. The five padel courts do not occupy a separate piece of urban land because the footprint was already being used. The parking structure continues to perform its original function, while its upper layer has been given an entirely different purpose.

Instead of dividing space, functions are stacked.

This sounds obvious, yet much of our urban planning still starts with a two-dimensional map. We designate land for housing, mobility, business, greenery and sport and then try to fit everything together. In a city where space is scarce, perhaps that approach is no longer enough.

We need to start designing in three dimensions.

Parking structures, shopping centres, schools, offices, mobility hubs and residential buildings all have roofs. Some will be unsuitable for public use, while others could potentially accommodate sport, play, greenery, energy or combinations of these functions. Structural capacity, accessibility, safety, wind, noise and maintenance obviously need to be considered. But those are reasons to design carefully, not reasons to ignore this layer of the city.

The crucial question should therefore be asked much earlier in the development process: what could this roof contribute to the city?