CWA Blog Archive-Great Wall Design What Is It & How To Get It

Great Wall Design What Is It & How To Get It

Pdf Summary

This article explores great wall design through the perspective of The Pad Climbing team, who identify three angles for evaluating it: setting, climbability, and aesthetics. Their design process starts by taking the space and visualizing its best use based on the flow of climbers, then designing the angles. The setting director then provides feedback, and finally, drawing on one team member's background in set design, color is added to ensure the walls are Instagrammable from any angle. The team emphasizes that while they don't have many gyms, they have extensive building experience, from altering initial builds to deconstructing entire gyms and starting from scratch to consulting others, and they stress the value of trusting professional judgment. A key principle is that walls must be unique to you and your team, since the walls are truly the basis of your whole operation. In the early years, they literally built the walls themselves. The article features chief gym designer Yishai Horowitz and setting director Joe Maier. Horowitz articulates a core design tenet: ideally there should be no area of your walls that can't be used, no dead space. He personally favors big features that blend into more moderate angles rather than having steep and vertical sections close together, an approach that also creates more inclusivity by serving a wider range of climbers rather than just the strong. The throughline is that great wall design is a deliberate, multi-disciplinary craft balancing setting potential, climbability, and aesthetics, and that the walls, as the foundation of the entire operation, deserve professional expertise and thoughtful, space-maximizing design. The Pad team's process, flow-based space planning, angle design, setting input, and color, models how these considerations integrate, while Horowitz's no-dead-space and blended-angle principles show how good design maximizes usable terrain and inclusivity. For operators, the article argues that walls shouldn't be an afterthought or a generic build but a customized, expertly-designed foundation reflecting the gym's identity and serving all its climbers.

Asset Caption

This piece explores great wall design via The Pad Climbing team, who evaluate it through three angles: setting, climbability, and aesthetics. Their process flows from space planning to angles to setting input to color. Designer Yishai Horowitz's principles, no dead space and blended angles, maximize usable terrain and inclusivity, treating walls as the foundation of the whole operation.