Parkour Meets Design: Four Spaces Built for Movement

Parkour is more than a sport; it’s a conversation with architecture. Every railing, ledge, and staircase becomes an invitation to explore what a space can do and how bodies can respond. As the National Building Museum presents Momentum Park(our), a new installation that brings the sport into our historic building, we’re highlighting four of the most iconic sites in the world where architecture and athleticism meet.

1. Freeway Park – Seattle, Washington, USA

Landscape architecture for public play

Originally built to cap the I-5 highway, Freeway Park is a concrete landscape of steps, ledges, platforms, and planters. For parkour athletes, it’s a masterpiece of urban movement. The park’s varied elevations and interlocking geometries offer endless combinations for vaults, drops, and flows.

Why it stands out:

• Designed to encourage movement and exploration
• Natural integration of levels, platforms, and transitions
• A rare example of brutalist landscape architecture made for public play

2. Lisses and Évry – Paris Suburbs, France

The birthplace of modern parkour

Parkour was born in the towns of Lisses and Évry, located just south of Paris. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, young athletes began navigating their housing estates using only their bodies and the built environment, turning stairwells, walls, and railings into training grounds.

Why it stands out:

• Iconic concrete structures from mid-century French social housing
• Narrow gaps, high drops, and curved ledges offer technical challenges
• Historic significance as the origin of parkour’s philosophy and practice

3. Southbank Undercroft – London, UK

A Brutalist stage for urban expression

Located beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall along the Thames, the Southbank Undercroft has served as an informal playground for decades. Though best known as a historic skateboarding site, it’s also a celebrated space for parkour, freerunning, and street performance.

Why it stands out:

• Unofficial yet widely accepted as a creative space
• Protected from redevelopment thanks to grassroots activism
• A compact, angular setting with multiple levels and ledges

4. Skyline Park – Denver, Colorado, USA

An invitation to explore architecture

Designed by Lawrence Halprin, the same landscape architect behind Freeway Park, Skyline Park in Denver was once another brutalist gem for parkour. Though much of Halprin’s original design has been altered, the remaining terraces and walls still reflect the intent: to create a civic space that invites physical interaction.

Why it stands out:

• A historic example of architecture as invitation, not obstacle
• Layered forms and varied elevations for parkour creativity
• A reminder of how design trends affect public movement

Rethinking Architecture Through Movement

These sites reflect different moments in architectural and urban history, but they all demonstrate what happens when people are empowered to move through space creatively. Some were designed for movement, others were reimagined for it, but all have something to teach us about how buildings shape behavior. Because sometimes the best way to understand a structure is to move through it.

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Momentum Park(our) is made possible thanks to our Presenting+ Sponsor, Amazon. Additional support from STUDIOS Architecture.