The World’s Five Funkiest Rooftops

Here at NWIR nothing pleases us more than completing a successful job installing or servicing a good roof! It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning and sleeping soundly again underneath our own roofs! But what really makes us excited is checking out some of the many marvellous feats of architectural wizardry behind some of the world’s funkiest rooftops. Here in this article we’ve listed (in no particular order) our top five all-time-favourite ridiculous roofs from around the globe!

Rooftop Skateboarding

There is a building in Brooklyn, New York with a round-edged roof that proves to be too irresistible for some of the suburbs’ skaters! This skate park isn’t for the faint hearted though, as skaters roll right to the edge of the building before zooming back down the ramp again. For the danger alone, this gnarly rooftop meets our top five!

Rooftop Racing

Keeping up the element of danger we move swiftly on to an old Fiat factory in Italy; that once boasted a fully-fledged racecourse on top of the building! The factory was based in Turin and was opened in 1923 for people to take newly manufactured cars for a test run. Unfortunately the track is no longer there, which is a real shame! We would have loved a go!

Rooftop Boating

This addition is neither gnarly nor dangerous, but it’s still majorly funky in its own right! The Selfridge’s rooftop ‘Pleasure Garden’ in London allows visitors to relax in a tradition English garden setting and even row a boat in a small man-made river. The lake can even change colour! At a special art event named the ‘Truvia Voyage of Discovery,’ guests were able to row on a fluorescent green lake! It’s different, it’s quirky and we definitely like it!

Rooftop Football

This rooftop is just unreal and at times we refuse to believe the thing even exists! A department store in Tokyo has a full-sized football pitch on its rooftop. Adidas Futsal Park was opened in the year 2001, around the same time that Japan and South Korea co-hosted the FIFA World Cup. Now the facility is open to the public! Hundreds of teams have visited the spot and played the beautiful game up on the roof! Madness!

Rooftop Tennis

Hands down, this one is officially the coolest and perhaps the most well-known! Built on top of the Burj al Arab hotel in Dubai, this temporary installation was both a bold and awe-inspiring occasion. The world’s highest tennis court was built in the lead-up to the Dubai Men’s Open in 2005 and players were able to run right up to the edge of the helipad platform. Without doubt, the best moment for this roof was when Andre Agassi and Roger Federer were asked to play a game over 1,000ft above ground level. That’s nerve-racking stuff, never mind tennis-racking!

Image Sources:

Rooftop Racing:

https://blog.cochran.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Test-Track-on-Roof.jpg

Rooftop Skateboarding:

https://www.ixdaily.com/storage/upload/574/screen_shot_2014-03-07_at_4.47.36_pm-medium_0.png

Rooftop Boating:

https://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8wfzzERfL1rs7m5o.jpg

Rooftop Football:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Tokyo_rooftop_football.jpg/1280px-Tokyo_rooftop_football.jpg

Rooftop Tennis:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MB9g3fu4AAg/maxresdefault.jpg