Tag: skateboarding | ArchDaily

Rethinking Public Space Through a Skateboarder’s Eyes

Eduardo Souza — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Created by California surfers who wanted to bring the lines of surfing onto asphalt, skateboarding soon outgrew its role as a simple alternative for flat days. It established itself as a practice that reads the city through a different logic, reinterpreting steps, handrails, walls, and interstitial spaces as possible lines, challenges, and opportunities. Over time, it evolved into a global urban culture, a way of inhabiting and transforming public space through movement. What was once marginal has become a catalyst for urban activation, community building, and new uses for overlooked spaces. At its core, skateboarding reveals how many cities coexist within the same city, depending on who moves through them and how each person is able to reinterpret their surroundings.

Inclusion, Encounter, and Creativity in Public Spaces: The Role of Skateboarding in the Pursuit of Urban Wellbeing

Agustina Iñiguez — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 07:30:00 +0000

How is it possible to achieve emotional well-being in public spaces? What role do public spaces play in promoting urban well-being? Considering that sports practices can be a vital component in creating healthy public spaces, skateboarding, one of the most globally recognized urban activities, offers an alternative for building opportunities for the physical, recreational, social, cultural, and even professional development of multiple generations.

Architecture and Public Spaces: 11 Skate Parks Around the World

Susanna Moreira — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 05:00:00 +0000

Skateboarding is often associated with the use of public spaces such as streets, squares, and sidewalks and has become a sport that blends into everyday life in the cities. Although skateboarding is sometimes considered marginalized, because of the dispute over public spaces, it allows underused places such as areas under or near overpasses to be revamped for practicing sports. Many sports centers have been incorporating skate parks into their programs, showcasing very unique designs.

Kickflips & Curb Cuts: New Skate Parks Shaping Urban Design

Eric Baldwin — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 04:00:00 +0000

Skateboarding is its own urban experience. As interactive public spaces and tactile surfaces, skate parks have slowly begun to shape the way we think about urban design. Beyond the boundary of parks themselves, skaters look at the architecture of the built environment outside of its intended purpose, and in turn, are rethinking how we gather, move around, and reimagine the future of urban life.

Why the Restoration of the Southbank Undercroft Is a Landmark for Both Architecture and Skateboarding

Stuart Maclure — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 09:30:00 +0000

The Southbank Undercroft, which lies beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall along the River Thames in London, has been the subject of much debate in recent years following a proposed closure and redevelopment in 2013. Long Live Southbank, an organization born out of this threat of expulsion, gave the diverse community who call the space home a voice. After 17 months of campaigning, they were successful in ensuring the Undercroft was legally protected and fully recognized as an asset of community value. Since then, the group of activists has begun another groundbreaking journey.

EFFEKT Wins Contest to Redevelop Abandoned Train Shed in Esbjerg with Streetmekka

Rory Stott — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 01:00:00 +0000

EFFEKT has been awarded first prize in a competition to transform a disused train shed in Esbjerg, Denmark with their proposal to transform the roundhouse-style industrial structure into a home for skating and a host of other street culture activities. Entitled Streetmekka, the design restores the industrial shed's original circular geometry, incorporating indoor facilities for transition and bowl skating, basketball courts, a street dance area, workshop areas for DJ-schools and street art as well as meeting rooms, administration offices, a cafe, kitchen, changing rooms and a large social area and reception. In the heart of the circular compound, the design features an enclosed street sport plaza and large outdoor social space.

'The Rom' Becomes Europe's First Listed Skatepark

Rory Stott — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

English Heritage has awarded a Grade-II listing to "The Rom," a skatepark in Hornchurch on the outskirts of London. Built in 1978, the Rom was one of the UK's first wave of purpose-built skateparks, and probably the most complete example found in the UK today. The listing makes the Rom the first protected skatepark in Europe, and just the second in the world after Tampa's "Bro Bowl" was added to the USA’s National Register of Historic Places last year.

Skaters Win Battle Against Southbank Centre

Rory Stott — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

London's Southbank Centre announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement with skateboarding group Long Live Southbank, and is dropping plans to move the famous skatepark to a new site underneath Hungerford Bridge nearby. The decision, which is ensured by a binding planning agreement with Lambeth Council, brings a close to a dispute that has lasted almost a year and a half - ever since the Southbank Centre unveiled redevelopment plans by Feilden Clegg Bradley which included the removal of the skatepark in favour of retail space in the Southbank's undercroft.

Southbank Scheme Likely to Be Abandoned

Rory Stott — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Southbank Centre has announced that it is delaying its planning applicationonce again.The decision has been prompted by comments from London Mayor Boris Johnson, who last month opined that the skate park should remain in its current location. An official statement from the Southbank Centre said: "it is far from clear how the scheme might now proceed without exposing Southbank Centre to unacceptable levels of financial risk but it has committed to a final three-month search."

Controversial Plans for Southbank Centre Face New Challenges

Rory Stott — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It's been almost two months since we revealed that the Southbank Centre had agreed to support a fundraising campaign by Long Live Southbank, the campaign aiming to preserve the skatepark in Southbank's undercroft and save it from the £120 million redevelopment of the site as a whole.

Southbank Centre To Honor Skateboarders' Fundraising Campaign

Rory Stott — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In yet another twist to the ongoing story of the Southbank Centre redevelopment, the Architects' Journal reports that the Southbank Centre has agreed to back a fundraising campaign to keep the famous skate park (if you missed the potential re-designs, click here), with the stipulation that a plan B be put in place in case the fundraising fails. And with at least £17 million needed to replace the revenue that the Centre would have gained by filling the undercroft with retail units, it could be time for the thousands who objected to the proposals to put their money where their mouth is. Find the full article here.

Southbank Centre Releases Proposals for Urban Skateboarding Space

Vanessa Quirk — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ever since London's Southbank Centre and Feilden Clegg Bradley revealed plans for the new ‘Festival Wing' earlier this year, the plans have come under fire - and by no group more vociferous than London's skateboarders.

Skaters Rights to Southbank Will Be Preserved

Rory Stott — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In the latest twist in an ongoing saga, the skateboarders campaigning to save the undercroft of the Southbank Centre have succeeded in a bid to list the space as an Asset of Community Value under the Localism Act, as reported by Architects' Journal. The listing means that any planning decision would have to take the loss to the skating community into account. Read the full article here.

Controversy Reigns Over Southbank Centre

Rory Stott — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The Southbank Centre and Feilden Clegg Bradley have taken their designs back to the drawing board, deciding to delay their planning application in order to resolve the mounting issues surrounding the proposal.

Skaters Object to Southbank Centre Proposals

Rory Stott — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The saga of the Southbank Centre redevelopment in London heated up recently, after the scheme for the new 'Festival Wing' was formally submitted to Lambeth's planning department. The scheme, which has been well received by some of the architecture community, including the centre's original architects Norman Engleback and Dennis Crompton, has run afoul of the skateboarding community, which opposes the plan to infill the undercroft that has been their home for almost 40 years.

Why Skaters Need the Southbank Centre

Rory Stott — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Among the extensive discussion of Feilden Clegg Bradley's scheme to redesign the Southbank Centre in London, one issue which has sometimes been ignored by the architectural media has been the proposal to relocate the skate park in the under-croft of the Queen Elizabeth Hall to a space beneath the nearby Hungerford bridge.

Le Corbusier: The Patron Saint of Skateboarders

Vanessa Quirk — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We here at ArchDaily are big fans of Roman Mars' radio program 99% Invisible, and just had to share the latest show: "In and Out of Love." In it, Mars explores the changing face of Philadelphia's JFK Plaza (more commonly known as LOVE Park), why its Modernist characteristics made it perfect for skateboarding (although city officials certainly didn't feel that way), and why Le Corbusier truly is the patron saint of skateboarders.

Why Skateboarding Matters to Architecture

Vanessa Quirk — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 10:30:05 +0000

Every June 21st since 2003, Go Skateboarding Day has rallied skateboarders around the globe – in skateparks and public plazas, downtown nooks and parking lots – to grind, ollie, and kickflip it with the best of them.