No, we don’t mean bouldering. “Buildering” is a real thing that real people do in real settings. What is it? Getting down to the brass tacks of it all, it is basically urban climbing, or climbing on buildings and other manmade (thereby artificial) structures. Imagine Spiderman, without the spidey senses or full-body spandex suit. Or one of those terrifying scenes from Planet of the Apes where the apes take over a city and are crawling all over bridges or buildings as well as on top of telephone wires.
Anyway, buildering has always resided on the outside of the already fringe (so-called) “climbing mainstream.” But the Sondrio Street Climb in Sondrio, Italy, signifies an ever-increasing popularity as the sect of this sport gains further publicity and amasses a wider following in addition to its long-devoted core.
On April 11 of this year, the Italian city hosted its sixth buildering festival in which competitors had five and a half hours to conquer as many routes as possible, before the final in the main square. Needless to say, this is both inspired and weird… making it a perfect streetside evolution for stone monkeys to converge upon.
Climb away, kids. Climb away.
