Skatepark Continua / MBL architectes + bureau David Apheceix

Curated by Paula Pintos
SKATEPARK • BOISSY-LE-CHÂTEL, FRANCE
Architects : MBL architectes, bureau David Apheceix
Area : 500 m²
Year : 2020
Photographs : Maxime Verret, Yann Stofer
Manufacturers : Béton Briard
Construction : Vulcano
Associated Architect : Constructo
In Situ Design : In-Out Concept
Landscape Architect : Camille Fréchou
City : Boissy-le-Châtel
Country : France

Textual content description offered by the architects. For 10 years now, MBL architectes has been engaged on the progressive transformation of a former industrial mill in Boissy-le-Châtel, France, into a recent artwork venue for Galleria Continua. Began in 2013, the venture goals to take care of and protect the economic wasteland, typical of the positioning. Residues of fallen down constructions, underlined by the presence of horticultural crops and the event of untamed endemic species, merge and develop alongside the variety of business buildings.

The venture for Skatepark Continua follows analysis performed on the areas produced by skate cultures, which resulted in a publication and an exhibition at Villa Noailles in Hyères, France, in 2016. This analysis helped us perceive the structuring function {that a} skatepark can have within the improvement of a territory. Not like what one might suppose of such specialised gear, skateparks do set off the gathering of a various inhabitants.

A gathering level for youngsters and oldsters, a playground for the observe of all kinds of rolling sports activities, and an area for essentially the most assiduous coaching of skateboarding, skateparks construct momentary communities, in addition to lasting friendships. Their means to generate a type of “public life” made the development of the skatepark on this web site so related within the first place. It introduced a brand new public to the premises of the gallery, not all the time conversant in up to date artwork, and supplied a gathering area to close by residents. 

The development of Skatepark Continua explores the probabilities of moist concrete. On the positioning itself, metallic frames have been assembled and welded. Contemporary concrete was sprayed immediately onto metallic reinforcement, then pulled and smoothed to the specified shapes earlier than it set. Primarily empirical, the fabrication of the skatepark is essentially as a result of dexterity of the mason-skaters in control of giving it form. The development web site was performed within the method of a efficiency that celebrated the encounter of a venture and a web site.

Whereas designing this venture, a need emerged to discover the fluidity attribute to the primary skateparks of the 1970s. In pre-digital instances, the discovered or constructed types of early skateparks prefigured the geometry that parametric architecture would handle to mannequin and popularize in the beginning of our century. The venture explores this prehistory, the empirical premises of non-standard architecture.

Designed as a steady strip, avoiding any inflexible delineation, the skatepark is supposed to be a structure for the panorama. Stretching alongside the previous railway tracks that cross the economic web site, the skatepark is immersed in bushes and bushes. It connects buildings on this distended territory. The curved traces of uncooked concrete subtly define the shadows of lime bushes, poplars, birches, and buddleias. With none type of preconceptions about its design, the form of the skatepark adapts to the specificities of the bottom and the prevailing vegetation.

Robinson Adey

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