Skateboarding, Space & The City: Architecture & The Body

This is a highly regarded text by a writer who is also a skateboarder and contemporary, counter-culture flaneur, one might say.  Has insight into the urban jungle as we experience through the body/space/world of the skateboarder.

"A Profound Weakness"

"Some protestant churches are eleborate and contemporary such as crystal cathederal in Garden Grove, California. However, there is not always the money, or even the desire, to build buildings. This portable, blow up church is one alternative solution-though it does seem a bit impotent and gives a whole new meaning to accusations that church services are full of hot air."

(Quote from Christians & Kitsch chapter 13 Betty Spackman)

With this idea of compromising, of not creating this building but replacing it with an, essentially, bouncy castle it takes away the aesthetic of the tradional church building and loses any authenticity.

http://www.bestival.net/html/whatelse/theinflatablechurch

skate park project in association with the life centre

For my external design project I have been researching infomation on the Life Centre that is being built in Central Park Plymouth. The skate park which is in  the area now is going to be demolished and the area rebuilt on. At the moment this is the main park that skaters and bmx riders use the most. In my project I have been commissioned to design, using glass, a way that the concrete from the skate parks bowl can be recycled into 150 small awards and two large that will be given to the people that use the park. Before the park is torn down the bowl will be covered by an illustration by James Jarvis, a Londoner. This will be then carefully dismanteld (hopefully) so that it can then be combined with hot glass to create the awards.

The Spaces between Buildings

In the book The Spaces between Buildings, Professor of geography Larry R. Ford analyses the role of Space. The book encompasses three photographic essays: Buildings and the Spaces around Them, Lawns, Trees, and Gardens in the City and Places for Driving, Strolling and Parking.

Ford focuses on particular aspects of Urban Spaces, highlighting the importance of the Spaces in between buildings, as well as the actual physical buildings themselves. For instance, Ford questions 'when does "space between buildings" become "open space containing buildings?"...

Well worth a look...

Ford, L. (2000) The Spaces between Buildings. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

A Man Made Puddle

Spanish Architects Alicia Velazquez and Analia Garcia created this 8 metre long puddle from "flabby " reflective silicone rubber. They named it Ablando which means softening. The Albe'niz Theatre borrowed it for the Malaga film festival; it was displayed on the pavement on the outside the main entrance. Velazquez said "we wanted to decelerate people, we created a moment of confusion, so people started looking around, noticing buildings and becoming aware of where they are".

This for me is an ideal example of design in the landscape which altered the way in which people interacted with a space. A simple intervention which would have made many passersby aware and take consideration of a space in totally different way than they had previously.