Mitō Bouldering
Zurich, Switzerland
Specs: Mitō Bouldering opened last April in Zurich, Switzerland, and was established by co-founders Dylan Vogt, Janic Halioua, Giorgio Zinetti, David Simon and Aaron Brändli under parent entity Ryu Sports AG. Vogt described the founding team as “tight-knit,” noting “all of us met through climbing, and this gym is something we genuinely built from a shared obsession.” According to Vogt, the idea behind Mitō first emerged in a “half-serious, half-dreaming” conversation, “the way the best plans usually start.” He said, “the real seed of Mitō was planted in Japan,” where he has spent a lot of time climbing at B-Pump Ogikubo in Tokyo. Vogt always returned home from the trips to Tokyo a different person, he told CBJ, and thought about developing a similar concept in Zurich. “Not a copy of Japan,” he explained, but “something that carries the same philosophy…that bouldering is a craft.”
Vogt said the idea behind the gym evolved from an obsession to a plan and then a reality, and it’s rooted in a belief that “movement quality and attention to detail are the whole point, and where the journey on the wall is never truly over.” The timing for the gym’s launch wasn’t “a market calculation,” Vogt explained, but rather “when the right space came together in the right location,” following the planning and development phase. The founding team felt there was room for their vision in Zurich, which propelled the project forward. “There was a gap between what climbers in Zurich could experience locally and what’s possible when a gym is built entirely around that philosophy,” Vogt stated. “That gap felt like an invitation.”
Opening a gym in Zurich, specifically, was not strategy-based, Vogt said, and was done because Zurich is home for the team members, so it felt like an “obvious place to start.” Mitō was constructed in a preexisting industrial space that was transformed to fit the team’s vision. While searching for a location, Vogt said the search criteria were fairly simple: they needed the appropriate “ceiling height and proximity to the heart of Zurich.” He said, “Finding both in the same place turned out to be genuinely frustrating,” and the team was “on the verge of committing to another location entirely” when they discovered the current location for the first time. “There was an almost gravitational pull” to the space, Vogt said. “The volume, the raw industrial character, the bones of the building—it was already most of the way to what we had in our heads.”
Vogt added that, in many ways, this location “ticked every box at once,” with an appropriate height, size, location and atmosphere. “The big windows bring in natural light in a way that completely changes how a space feels to climb in. And practically speaking, it sits right on one of Zurich’s main tram lines,” he continued. “Accessibility matters, and we wanted the gym to be genuinely easy to get to from anywhere in the city.”
Mitō is “designed around three distinct zones: power, balance and coordination,” Vogt detailed, “because we believe different kinds of movement deserve dedicated space and dedicated setting.” In the 950-square-meter (10,226-square-foot) space, there is a Kilter Board, a Tension Board 2 and a full fitness gym. Additionally, the gym has a bistro, which was included because the team “wanted Mitō to be a place you could spend a whole day in, not just tick a session and leave.” The gym also has a workspace and retail shop. “The atmosphere is as much a feature as anything structural,” Vogt stated. “The music, the aesthetic, the Japanese-influenced design language—none of it is accidental. We wanted every part of the space to feel considered.”
Walls: Dreamwall
Flooring: Flipp
CRM Software: Owner/Contractor
Website: www.mito-bouldering.ch
Instagram: @Mito.Bouldering
In Their Words: “Mitō began as a passion project. It grew bigger than we initially anticipated, but that core motivation never changed. We weren’t trying to build a climbing business; we were trying to build the gym we’d always wanted to climb in. The fact that Zurich is a city that appreciates craft, quality, and considered design made it feel like the right home for that idea. These are values the city already lives by, and they’re values Mitō is built on.” – Dylan Vogt, Co-Founder of Mitō Bouldering
