Skating and Architecture

As part of my development for my final I'm aiming to make the 'skatepark' aspect of the site more bi-functional, after all skaters don't need a skate park to skate, they just need an area with interesting architecture and angles that they can work with and do tricks on. This got me researching the connection between architecture and and skating..

Research

Skateboarders are an increasingly common feature of the urban environment - recent estimates total 40 million world-wide. We are all aware of their often extraordinary talent and manoeuvres on the city streets.

"The board becomes an extension to the body, a prosthesis, which constructs a specific mode of movement and engagement. The city is transformed into a series of ramps, of slides and runs - a city of surfaces and textures." Borden describes the skater's passage across the city as a recomposition of urban and architectural elements.

Borden, Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body (New York: Berg, 2001)

A skater, unlike your typical pedestrian, experiences space just as intensely and consciously as an architect himself, albeit in a different way. He/she is alive to the possibility of space, not in its totality, as an architect would be, but as a collection of tactile surfaces to be jumped on, grinded, and conquered.

The skater offers a revolutionary perspective for the architect: one that allows you to see  buildings beyond what they were intended to be, to see (and design) buildings as “building blocks for the open minded.”

“An ambler sees a bench and sits on it? Exactly what the architect and designer intended. A skateboarder sees a bench and contemplates. How many different ways can I engage the form of this bench with my wooden board, metal trucks and four rubber wheels?”

http://www.archdaily.com/246526/why-skateboarding-matters-to-architecture/

Here's an interesting video I found which shows a skater skating in his home streets, using parts of the city architecture to to grind, ollie, kickflip and just generally skate. 

Examples of skaters using the city architecture as 'equipment' to do tricks on: 

Relating research to my idea: 

Keeping in mind the idea of using the architecture and objects that are already around the site to skate on, I started brainstorming ideas on how to provide a site that is made for one purpose (boatshed) but can still be used for another (skateboarding). 

Architecture

-Roof

-Stairs

-Railing

-Bench

-Fence

Objects

-Boat fin

-Rubbish bin

-Boat shed tools

-Boat oar

Some examples of objects/textures I could incorporate into my site which could be of use to both boatshed owners and skaters.