Basement DIY – Stuttgart

Words by David Tuschell
Photos by Marco Rottig

“For years now there have been a number of small basement miniramps in Stuttgart. The biggest of them was built in an apartment house on the west side of the city deep under the streets, in a second basement owned by Micha Schöler. However the humidity of the basement destroyed the wooden surface and after some time it was impossible to repair it. Over the years there was a lot of talking going on about replacing the miniramp with a concrete bowl, but as you know talk is cheap and nobody took the initiative. Things changed when Maxi Schröer stepped in. He was already involved in a couple of smaller DIY projects and brought along skills from his apprenticeship as a carpenter. On skate tours his primary destinations had always been DIY spots, so he was really passionate and felt responsible to build a proper DIY in his own city.

Max wasn’t one of those talkers and fortunately he kicked all our asses, so we began to tear down the miniramp on Micha’s birthday, on March 21st 2015. After that, it was one year of just digging out stones, soil and dirt and carrying it out of the basement to reach the right height for the bowl. During this time Max moved into one of the apartments of the house and wild discussions about the design of the bowl started. Micha was more into a concept of a mellow shaped bowl, Max however, preferred the idea of tight transitions with big walls. As the construction began the core of workers became Max, Micha and Luca Cini, a stone mason who helped us big time with his construction skills and as he cut Pudi’s pool coping tiles perfectly to match the hips and corners. Even though Max was busy with his final year of his apprenticeship, he often spent his after-work hours in the basement preparing the concrete sessions, which we often held up during weekends. Preparing for the weekends was indispensable because space was rare and final plans mainly developed during preparing itself.

We started the concrete work mostly on Saturday mornings and finished around 3 at night. A lot of inexperienced workers like myself joined helping, which was sometimes stressful for Max because he had to take care that we didn’t destroy more than we were building. Mixing, throwing and shaping the concrete down in the basement with no space, no sunlight and bad air was exhausting. But we tried to make the best out of it.

Reinsburg der Bau – construction of the bowl
video by Crete Slave

It was a lot of sweating, a lot of drinking, a lot of smoking and a lot of trashtalking. Micha always took care of beer and ordering pizza or Anna, who also lives in the house, cooked delicious meals for us. Inexperienced workers started to gain experience and every new part we built became better. Long story short: after 2 years of work the final result was outstanding. We brought out the best of this basement: perfect surface, transitions in every height, and endless lines and challenges.

On behalf of everyone who already skated the bowl or will skate it in the future, I’d like to say thanks to Micha Schöler who made everything possible and financed everything, Max, without him, we would still sit on a wasted ramp and talk about building a rad DIY bowl someday, everybody who worked his ass off building this bowl, Pudi for perfect and budget pool coping and of course shoutouts to all DIY builders for the inspiration.”  – David Tuschell