Artists leap across buildings—but don’t try this at home

HUNDREDS of spectators watched open mouthed as performers leapt across high buildings and a pile of shipping containers on the Thames waterfront. They crammed onto Trinity Bouy Wharf at Blackwall (pictured) for Parkhour, the art of free movement

By Else Kvist

HUNDREDS of spectators watched open-mouthed as performers leapt across high buildings and a pile of shipping containers on the Thames waterfront.

They crammed onto Trinity Bouy Wharf at Blackwall (pictured) for Parkhour, the art of free movement.

This is where fit young men and women in this urban gymnastic sport’ leap from building to building in a continuous movement involving running and jumping, sometimes at great heights.

The show, part of London’s Art and Lives of Buildings festival, was performed at an ideal location—the old Victorian depot where the buoys used to aid navigation on the Thames were stored and repaired.

The wharf nowadays is used for artistic and cultural activities, housing a trendy arts centre and studios as well as an office complex made from recycled shipping containers and London’s last floating lightship at the foreshore where the Thames is joined by the Lea tributary.