Creativity is all about finding solutions. How does someone skate a spot? What is even considered a spot? In skateparks, such questions rarely come up because the obstacles are specifically built – in compliance with building regulations – for certain tricks. But what about creativity, both in skating the parks and in the planning? To explore this, we spoke to a few experts. Dr. Veith Kilberth, who wrote his PhD thesis on skateparks, and Daniel Schreitmüller, both from the planning office LNDSKT, shared insights into park planning. We also got some input from Leo Valls, who is taking the opposite approach in Bordeaux by integrating obstacles into public spaces, as well as Jan Kliewer and Max Beckmann from Yamato Living Ramps. The latter was also one of the founders of the 2er DIY project in Hanover in 2007, so he knows about building with and without regulations.
Veith: Every project is always individual and geared towards local wishes and needs. There are always more needs than resources (size of the area, location, budget), which means that it is always a compromise. Our job as skatepark designers is to find the best compromises within this complex situation that work well in the short, mid, and long term. Fortunately, there are now participation groups of locals and that makes a huge difference to the design quality. The first question is: What do they want? And then: How can we implement this? And there are different dimensions of creativity. On the one hand, there is the element design, i.e. the shape of the elements and the arrangement of the elements, i.e. the creative structure. On top of that, there’s an additional layer, what you can call the surface of creativity. Here you can create certain visual expressions. The value of the skatepark design lies in maximizing the creative spectrum while simultaneously ensuring functionality.
Dani: It has to work overall. There’s no point in planning the most creative park if it doesn’t go down well with the locals.
Veith: I can’t remember anyone saying to us: “The most important thing for me is that this is a totally creative park, with multilines and a unique obstacle”. It’s more of a duty to accommodate the functional aspects and it would be relatively easy if you just planned a linear park with gray surface, which would also save budget. But after establishing the functionality, creative planning follows. Should you incorporate visual elements that reflect the surrounding area or the city, and what other factors need to be considered?
"If you’re not from Barcelona or Paris, then a skatepark is often the only spot, and it should be the coolest place it can possibly be to hang out."
Dani: We always say that you skate with your eyes too, so that’s an important point. You also have to find solutions so that not every park looks the same. That’s the job of a good planning company. By arranging the obstacles and through visual creativity, you can find stand-alone obstacles to make a space special. Then people prefer to skate there or identify more as a local.
Veith: Above all, if you’re not from Barcelona or Paris, then a skatepark is often the only spot, and it should be the coolest place it can possibly be to hang out. On average, people spend far longer in skateparks than on a football pitch or other sports facilities, for example.
Dani: There is also the dimension of the cities, which are usually the clients. It’s no longer the case that skateparks are built on the outskirts of cities like they used to be, but rather in the center, where many different types of use come together. And then you have the demand from the city to create something special, to become a figurehead for the city.
Veith Kilberth – Backside Smith
Daniel Schreitmüller – Ollie
Dani: We often have to deal with lots of requirements in a limited space. This means that compromises have to be found, especially if working on compact parks that consist of mainly basics features. If you place them in a very blunt line then this dictates a lot about how the obstacle can be used. By focusing on providing multidirectional paths – we call this the multiline concept – users profit from the creativity of combining different elements.
Veith: The controversial thing about it is that you have crossing routes. From our perspective, this is entirely desirable as long as it complements linear usage. But if we now look at things that are merged or combined with each other, then these are sometimes unique things, but it’s not said that skating becomes more creative as a result. What I would say makes skating more creative is when things aren’t so ultra-hard and there’s more space to be playful. So if you have a not so easy to skate rainbow rail, then you ride it once and you’ve killed it and that’s it. You could probably even say that the more creative the obstacle, the harder it is to ride, i.e. in most cases you can probably ride a basic obstacle more creatively than something fancy.
Dani: Definitely, often skatepark design is about finding the right balance between “trendy” features and ever-green obstacles.
Veith: We have a lot of discussions about it where we say it would be more creative or more stylish, but it doesn’t feel good. A skatepark is supposed to be fun and you don’t build a park to have another rad street spot. You should look for the rad spots on the street. You don’t need a high street rail in the park.
Dani: With a bowl park consisting of different sections, the picture might be a bit different. But still, it’s no good if you only build something badass where the local hero can do a five-o slasher, but nobody else dares to try a trick.
Veith: You grow with your tasks, but only with the ones that you’re confident about and that you’re up for. Then things quickly fall by the wayside. That’s why you always have to weigh up how high to set the level. We plan from the low-threshold things to the more difficult ones. If the basics are covered, then you can go crazy.
Dani: You also need a path to get there. Having a small, a medium and a big set, will definitely help you with your learning curve.
Veith: The bigger a skatepark, the more creativity you can pack into it. But it also applies to the communal view, the more skateparks there are, the more you can profile individual ones and build in special creations. Just like you don’t want to have the same obstacles in a skatepark, you don’t want the same skateparks in one municipal area.
Dani: Nevertheless, there are basics that you can’t do without. It’s perfectly legitimate to want a ledge in your skatepark, but you don’t necessarily need a wicked spine or bowl corner if that’s already available in the neighboring park. It’s also the planning office’s job to see what other parks in the area have to offer.
Veith: I would say it’s very street-inspired. China Banks would be a classic example. And also inspired by DIY.
Dani: They say “Theres nothing new under the sun”. So, of course I think it’s important to be inspired by things that have been done well and then see what you can do with them. Our camera roll is full of photos and screenshots of spots we’ve seen along the way and want to incorporate.
Veith: In skatepark design, it’s mostly not about the absolute new, but the relatively new, combining existing elements rather than inventing entirely new ones.
"In most cases you can probably ride a basic obstacle more creatively than something fancy."
Dani: While Leo [Valls] in Bordeaux intervenes in the public space in such a way that it doesn’t become a skatepark, we try to get things from the public space into the park and optimize them. We don’t have to take passers-by into consideration, for example.
Veith: Of course, there is also the occasional criticism that the park is an enclosure, a functional space, that there is no authentic skating in the skatepark. According to Adorno, a wrong life can’t be lived rightly. But there is also this other dimension, that the skaters create their own skatepark, their own dreamland. If you come from a small town that doesn’t even have a decent Aldi parking lot and an old town full of cobblestones, then you are dependent on your skatepark. Not to mention the transition skaters, what else are they supposed to do here in Europe? We also plan most skateparks in rural areas and for them, a park is something completely different than for those in a city.
Dani: The most core street dudes also make skatepark clips. They’re also a meeting place, they’re used for warming up, to learn tricks, for after-work sessions, etc.
Veith: The skatepark isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing compared to street skating either.
Veith: On the one hand, you can refer to resources: How much space, how much budget, etc.? On the other hand, what is legally possible? For example, we would like to install mobile or scalable things in skateparks, but you quickly have a liability issue, that’s a legal problem, TÜV issues. That makes sense for the most part, but it is restrictive. Another aspect that we haven’t even talked about yet is that when planning a skatepark, it’s usually not just people from the skate scene involved since the city sees it as a multifunctional sports space. Cities want to make all users happy and won’t build separate parks for skaters, BMX, and scooter riders.
Veith: That is the neuralgic point of any skate space planning.
Dani: We recently had a situation where we would have preferred to design an obstacle differently, but it would have become a barrier for the flood.
Veith: Drainage is also a real issue in skateparks so that you don’t have puddles. That’s why you have to slope the park to drain the water. This also means that you can’t easily implement designs that you would like to do, because then you would suddenly have civil engineering action that would blow the budget.
Dani: What you can feel most are uneven spots in the floor caused by imperfections in the concrete. Slopes, on the other hand, are placed in places where they are least noticeable. We wouldn’t place the apex in the approach area of the ledge. But if you have a long ledge that is on a slope and you don’t adjust it to the slope, but let it run straight, then it could be a few centimeters higher at one end than at the other.
Dani: If time allows it, we try to test and review every new park we plan. And it’s quite normal that there are things that you imagined in the planning that didn’t work out perfectly. In these cases, we make notes on what to adjust to provide an even better obstacle in the future. This can be nuances in height or angles. Discussing these aspects in the team then makes sure all the next projects profit from this experience.
Veith: And I also think we have to remain dissatisfied and mega critical. We have to get these small details right, because we also have a responsibility to the locals, who have often fought for their skatepark for years. We also have high expectations of ourselves and put a lot of time into the preliminary design. The hardest part is that you can never make everyone happy; I think Rune [Glifberg] said this, but it’s about doing everything we can to make as many people as possible happy.
DIY and regular ramp construction are two fundamentally different things because the premise is different. In a public park, there is generally much less leeway, the park has to work, so there is hardly any room for nonsense. It’s more a case of improving things that work and adding something new and making the composition creative. I think a public park with classics arranged in such a way that it’s something special is creative. The Dogshit Spot in Berlin is a good example of this. It’s really creative, even though the ramps are relatively standard. What annoys me about public skateparks is that some people think creativity is just about making the most boring standard park but colorful. Unfortunately, there are many examples of this. Sure, if you try innovations, they might not work 100%, but I think you should at least try. It’s more exciting in the DIY sector because everyone can do what they want. You can work with different materials and a ramp can also simply be bad. There are also ramps like this on the 2er in Hannover and that’s how innovation can happen. DIY is often the guinea pig and the ideas that arise there can then be incorporated into “real” parks once you’ve found out how they work properly. Like in DIY, if the priority is that you can run gas through the coping to light it, then everything else is irrelevant – totally cool. Go for it! Or you can build ramps that are so steep that it’s awesome to ride them, like the old Betonhausen. People there have creatively adapted to the limited space. What I also see in the DIY cosmos, for example with Pierre Descamps, is that he builds things that are not optimized for skateboarding, which makes it creative. I find the use of his obstacles and also the way he builds things, his thought process behind it, creative.
I believe skateparks and streetskating are complementary. From my experience skateboarding is about telling a story. Even skateparks need to be as creative as possible, for kids to learn and then be creative in the streets. My personal story is the relationship between skateboarding and the public space. Also in the streets you have other interactions with people. When it comes to skateable sculptures versus skateparks, I think the sculptures, since they’re set up in the streets, give a different approach and are more a social thing, where you interact with all kinds of people. But having nothing sometimes allows you to be more creative and use your brain even more. I think the ultimate creativity in skateboarding is to create with spots that other skaters wouldn’t even see as spots. So basically you create spots with your own imagination.
I don’t see a balancing act between creativity and the wishes of users. Reconciling the two is the task and expertise of the planners, to arrange what is desired, sensible, and feasible at the respective location in an exciting way. Creativity comes into play when you try to give individual features a certain something in terms of functionality and look, create an invigorating flow with good lines – without people constantly riding into each other. I see the balancing act more in the overlapping of available space, budgets, and common ideas. I can’t give a simple answer to what makes a creative skatepark for me. Perhaps I would rather ask: Is the location / the vibe inspiring? That depends on many things. Design, idea, structural quality, implementation, look… even locals or the crew you’re out with play a role. In the end, even a session in the parking lot can be fun. The stoke has to be right! Creative = good? It depends a bit on the definition… If I had to choose, I would prefer simple and functional in form – creative and high-quality in implementation and look, with attention to detail. When in doubt, I prefer simple and reduced – but well thought out and with intention.
