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It's Time to Re-Think Skatepark Design
11/13/2007
They start as dreams. Then, they find form as drawings and computer graphics. They are discussed, debated, measured and refined. The cost is estimated and the budgets approved. The contracts are signed and the builders begin. Soon enough, the concrete dries and the skatepark is in place. But what starts as a dream too often ends as something less, something with potential that can't really be tapped. Too often you face the reality that your skatepark looks great on paper but is a nightmare to skate. Sure, it's smooth and built to specification but it's still a nightmare. Every time you visit the park you find that it just doesn't work when it's filled with skaters; and it is ALWAYS filled with skaters.
Skateparks are popping up all over and they mostly seem to take the same basic form; some street obstacles, a flow area and maybe a pool or bowl. Some skateparks are all flow area, most notably some of the parks designed and built by Dreamland. Park design has moved towards more difficult terrain in the last 5 years. Parks now frequently feature tall vert or oververt areas. As the park features get bigger, speeds increase. Speed mixed with traffic equals danger. Big flow areas with tall walls create speed and blind spots. It is very difficult to navigate safely with skaters dropping in all over the place. It becomes a game of watching and waiting for the opportunity to skate your line. Large and tall flow areas under-utilize the available concrete. The Tempe, Arizona skatepark designed by SITE design Group is a good example of a flow area that limits use. At Tempe, hundreds of square feet of concrete can only be skated by one person at a time. Skaters wait at various spots around the area looking for a turn to drop in. It can take several minutes to get a run in, even with just a few skaters lined up. The Goodyear, AZ park (pictured above) has a massive flow area that covers nearly half of the park. This high-speed area can only be safely skated by one person at a time. I don't want to be seen as criticizing these excellent skatepark builders. The quality of their work is not in question. It's just my opinion that a new design philosophy can maximize the usability of the parks.
A new approach to skatepark design would take constant high-volume use into account from the beginning. An area like the Tempe flow area could be divided up into 3 or 4 smaller skate features so that the number of simultaneous skaters could be increased. Each feature would be "sessionable" by a group of skaters. This design would look more like a lot of self-contained skate spots rather than a giant slab of concrete. Skaters can choose which feature to session based on how many other people are skating it. This self-regulation of traffic would spread traffic across all the features. There would be no more crash derby factor. The Goodyear park above could sliced the massive flow area into three or four big bowls that could be sessioned separately.
An offshoot of this design philosophy would be to embed skate spots across a community rather than building one giant park. Each neighborhood park could have a unique feature to skate. Imagine that every city park has a different compact skate spot. One park would have a pure street plaza, another park would have a clover bowl and another an area with banks. Compact skatespots would negate the need for fences and security as fewer skaters would use the spot at any one time. Bigger is not always better.
I hope skaters and builders will consider this new design philosophy and keep skatepark design progressing into the future. Labels: skatepark
# posted by Michael @ 10:06 PM
SkateRock is Music For Skaters by Skaters
Skate Rock wasn't born, created or invented. Skate Rock was inevitable. Skaters are skaters first and foremost and whatever other labels society tries to lay on us are shunned. We define ourselves. A big part of that is making our own music. Musical influences from outside skate culture were filtered, twisted and adapted. Skaters took the loud fast and angry parts of punk, stripped away the fashion pose, and injected new ideas and humor to create Skate Rock. For skaters by skaters.
Believe in the Skate Culture Revolution! Long live Skate Rock!
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