Experiential adjacencies and spatial overlaps: Skateboarding in the urban environment

摘要

What is the relationship of recreation to the everyday landscape such as the parking lots, strip malls or downtown sidewalks? There is a large group of people in society who engage in their own specific type of activity in these spaces---utilizing it in an un-organized fashion as a place of self-expression, discovery and exploration. This study examines a specific group, the skateboarders, to address how their recreation contributes to the urban life in our cities. The intent of this practicum is to demonstrate how a design strategy, for this type of space, can serve a combination of recreation and other everyday functions.;Two age groups of skateboarders were surveyed to illustrate how everyday spaces are transformed into places of imaginative recreation. A precedent study offers an overview of how three Landscape Architectural projects can serve a degree of diversity in uses and users, and a collage experiment juxtaposes ideas from architecture and skateboard theory. As well, a design investigation is conducted at the parking lot site of Pembina Highway and McGillivray Boulevard. From this, it is found that an overlapping and adjacency of recreation activities with other everyday functions can be a powerful tool in Landscape Architectural design.