Basketball courts are often a setting for "uplifting" moments in sports, but this particular beech floor takes the concept to another level. Powered by a hydraulic ram, 440-square-feet of this Junckers SylvaSport Premium floor lifts up, sliding on two wheels on a metal track, and folds to reveal a trampoline pit. Once the floor is folded, the underlying trampoline elevates and locks into position level with the floor; the whole process takes about one minute. The trampoline/basketball court hybrid is located in the Newry Leisure Center in Northern Ireland and was designed by Belfast-based Kennedy Fitzgerald Architects, with the wood flooring supplied by Denmark-based Junckers Industries. Construction on the public project began with a 6.6-foot-deep hole in the building's four-court sports hall, where the trampoline, hydraulic frame and lid were installed. The main challenge then, says Declan Dolan, country manager with Junckers in Ireland, was figuring out how to fit the flooring over the lifting lid: should the entire floor be laid as normal and then precision-cut over the lid, or should the floor over the pit be installed separately from the rest of the court? They went with the first option, nailing the flooring to plywood sections fixed across the hydraulic unit over the pit. After eight days of installation, they let the floor settle for six weeks to acclimate, then used a plunge saw to cut a 7⁄8-inch depth along all four sides and the center line above the pit. Precision was, and will always remain, vital to the folding floor. As Dolan puts it: "We are talking about a 1⁄8-inch gap around a trampoline lid that cannot grow or shrink during the floor's lifetime, or the lid won't open!"
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