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A SKATE PARK THAT GLIDES THE LAND & DROPS INTO THE SEA
3rd Millenium Park, San Juan, P.R., 2004
Site: Three high points: in the middle, a pedestrian bridge over a restaurant – on one side, a conical hill – on the other, a slope up to a plateau over the ocean.
Project: Make a skate park by joining the three high points
On either side of the pedestrian ramp over the bridge, skating strips wave up and down as they roll down the hill. They rise and cross in mid-air, over the pedestrian walkway.
One strip rolls up and down toward the conical hill. It burrows into the hill and curves around itself into a sphere. The sphere loops through itself and proliferates, a sphere-within-a-sphere-within a sphere. You skate from one bowl into another. Where a sphere intersects the outer surface of the hill, it makes a crevice in the hill; sunlight spills in through the crevice, you walk up the hill and look in through a crevice.
The other strip heads toward the slope. It loops and rises, step by step, up the slope. You skate along a strip, or ollie from one strip up to another. You grind on the edges of the strips. On the plateau, the strip curve into quarter pipes, half-pipes – from short to long, from shallow to seep – out over the ocean. You leap up toward the sky, over the sea.
The green concrete gradates to blue. The skate park is lit at night: where the concrete shifts, it splits and leaves a crescent of light.
This project view belongs to San Juan Skate Park, and is threadged with:
(I,
L,
T,
A)