DIY SKATEPARK BENEATH THE M32
AN ARGUMENT FOR REBELIOUS AD HOC ARCHITECTURE TO OVERCOME FORGOTTEN SPACES
ADVANCED CULTURAL STUDIES: NARRATIVES OF BUILT FORM
THESIS STATEMENT
The main argument of the essay is to interpret the successful recovery of public space from modernist planning. The essay examines the initial intervention and the rebellious reaction which helped overcome the detrimental space created. The purpose of the essay is to identify if the communal ad hoc additions, combined with the counterculture ethos, which led to the success of the area as a public space.
INTRODUCTION:
This essay examines the M32 DIY skatepark which has been an inadvertent catalyst for positive change. The skatepark has overcome a detrimental boundary created by the motorway that displaced and divided communities. Barbara Bender (2002) stated, “Landscapes are created by the world around them. They are always in process of being shaped and reshaped.” This essay investigates a small section of landscape, shaped in the first instance by authorities and those in positions of power, to a local detriment. And secondly, the ad hoc interventions to the space by the local community. This essay seeks to make the argument that an organic and communal intervention can create a more successful landscape to fulfil the needs of the neighbourhood More specifically the role of the counterculture of skateboarding, its attitudes and ethos, which unknowingly helped create positive change and reclaim an overlooked public space.
The site is known by the community as the M32 DIY skatepark. It is situated underneath the flyover of the M32, adjacent to Stapleton Road within the threshold between Eastville and the lower Lockleaze and Easton area. In the 1960s the motorway was constructed as a top-down plan to improve Bristol’s infrastructure, given the rise of the motorcar Since the 1970’s the area has been synonymous with crime, drugs, and prostitution. Skateboarders have used the site since the latter 2000s and various iterations of an informal skatepark have grown. It has expanded in an impromptu manner by locals and the skateboarding community which has assisted the area in overcoming the border within the threshold of the boundary
Here I make the argument that the urban environment is far more than a forgotten space. The transitional space has been given new meaning by the reinterpretation of the space by the local community. As philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1991) has argued, architectural and urban space is made up of the physical places we use (the m32 motorway), the conscious ideas we have (the designed intention for that space), and people's actual, everyday experiences (the evolution of the skatepark).
METHODOLOGY:
This paper seeks to focus on the ethnographical qualities of the space and how this has evolved through the ad hoc intervention of the skatepark. The essay will be supported by photography, collage, cultural referencing, and discussion with users of the space. All photographs are of the author's creation unless stated otherwise.
CREATION OF A BOUNDARY:
Gloucestershire County Council and Bristol City Council partially funded the stretch of road, with a 75 per cent grant supplied by the national Ministry of Transport. The intervention aimed to inject the Bristol city centre with a new route from the M4 for easier access for commerce, The course of the motorway carved a line through the areas of Easton, St Paul’s, and Eastville with negligible regard for those that lived on the route. Being described as a ‘dagger thrust into the heart of the city’ in an archived BBC report from the time, as homes were flattened, residents relocated, communities divided, and a border established. It was a classic case of the needs of the people vs the needs of the power.
What makes this border interesting is that most boundaries can be defined as a line on a map, but this site has space that exists within the threshold of the boundary. It belongs to no one. I cannot help likening it to the Greek, Turkish Cypriot border, known as the green line. I grew up visiting family on the Greek side, near Famagusta. It was impossible to not be aware of the zone that divides a nation with an erratic no man's zone in the middle. Manifesting borders with such a large liminal zone inevitably led to an area of convoluted purpose. In the instance of the DIY skatepark it was the transitional public space the preceded it. Which was a key contributing factor in the degradation of the area, the undefined space became rife with crime, drugs, and prostitution. (Annali Grimes,2022)
Neither day nor night
Not the beginning
But not yet the ending
Neither light nor dark
Not summoned to toil
Or lulled to sleep
Suspended
Kevin Lynch (1960), the author of Image of the City, a collection of work analysing American cities, holds the view of that zeitgeist. Lynch refers to roads as 'paths' a form of transit line where ‘People observe the city while moving through it, and along these paths the other environmental elements are arranged and related..’ Suggesting that links connect places of interest with space presenting itself on either side of the transit line. However, used to create mental maps, the outcome was two dimensional, overlooking the void space created under the path when elevating it. In a more contemporary assessment, Anastasia Loukaitou‐Sideris (1996) interprets the realisation of these paths as cracks used as a metaphor for physical discontinuities that interrupt the city. Seen as underutilized or dilapidated space. Will Varley (2016), an English poet and folk songwriter, poetically tells stories with political commentary sang:
There's twenty four thousand miles 'tween someone's back and someone's smile
Who owns the land on which they walk?
Who owns the cracks between the walls?
The song is plentiful with commentary about borders and division, but it is the cracks between the wall that has poignant interest to this essay. As Loukaitou‐Sideris defines the space M32 as such And so, a crack the area becomes, being filled with forgotten objects from the city, litter, trollies, the diverted River Frome, dust, and even rough sleepers in search of shelter from the rain.
Thus, acknowledging the viewpoints of Lynch and Loukaitou‐Sideris, the space under the motorway must conform to the idea outlined by Richter and Peitgen
(1985), that a boundary such as the M32 motorway has the paradoxical nature of dividing and connecting people and place at the same time. However, Loukaitou‐Sideris perceives these not as negative anti spaces but as ‘forms awaiting realization'. Richter and Peitgen substantiate this by stating 'They (boundaries) are the playground for discovery and conquest.' That is what the site became, a playground for artists, skateboarders, and photographers all free to express their art in the evolving public realm.
“‘Transform the world’ – all well and good. It is being transformed. But into what? Here at your feet, is one small but crucial element in that mutation.”
Henri Lefebvre(1995)
REBELIOUS INTERVENTION:
Jane Jacobs (1961) famously stated in her esteemed book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a critique of urban planning policies in the ’50s, that ‘Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.’ Everybody being the key word. When the authorities created the motorway, the site did lay dormant, awaiting realisation, for 50 years. The authorities had spoken and now it was the people's chance to respond. Joe Samson-Hill (2014), in their comprehensive break down of the space, documents the creation of the first obstacles that were erected. The makeshift elements were amalgamated from timber or found material and moved around the site to various locations to fulfil the desire of the user to complete an array of skateboard tricks. As the location started to cement itself into the community, so did the ramps. Taking on a more permeant materiality as ramps were made from concrete, rails fixed into place. Like graffiti on a wall, new layers were added on top of old to form new obstacles. Unwittingly a frontier of change sprawled across the disused area. Litter and fly tipped objects were engulfed and repurposed in one way or another in a Frankenstein skatepark
When discussing skateboarding and architecture, Iain Borden is the most notable author on the subject. He has admiration toward the ideas of French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, contextualizing his work towards the topic of skateboarding. Most relevantly Borden’s comprehensive work of Skateboarding, Space, and the City: Architecture and the Body. Borden(2001) makes the argument that skateboarding exerts itself differently to other activities or hobbies “use values as opposed to exchange values”
in the ‘‘left-over spaces of modernist planning.’ Therefore, it does not engage with space for its intended purpose but to fulfil its own needs in an anarchic way. ‘We are bored in the city’ Chtcheglov’s opens ‘Formulary for a New Urbanism’ in an eccentric exposure to the faults of modernity. Borden makes the point that skateboarding, as a practice, also does so.
Jesse Neuhaus, a respected skateboarder, in an interview about street skateboarding said “The corporate types (Authority and power) see their structures as powerful and strong. I see them as something I can enjoy, something I can manipulate to my advantage.” Which reveals that skateboarders, and other counter cultures, unwittingly align with the ideas presented by Lefebvre and Chtcheglov. Which at its core are to reject the mundane of everyday life, boredom, and strive for something different, self-serving, and truly enjoyable.
It is difficult to read into the topic of borders and boundaries without crossing the contemporary subject matter of the border wall established between Mexico and America. Erected for a different purpose, to prohibit and control the crossing of people, but the resolution the same. The U.S. government spent billions of dollars to establish a wall and maintain the physical incarnation of a line on a map. Migrants still managed to traverse the border on foot, using simple wooden ladders and ramps. The situation is relevant to the site of the skatepark. As authorities create megastructures detrimental to the areas they divide. Rudimental techniques have overcome both. The negative space beneath the M32 by concrete, paint, and skateboarders. Artist, Ronald Rael (2017), author of Borderwall as Architecture created an installation of seesaws, winning design of the year 2020. Operating through gaps in the wall, the installation encouraging users from both sides to participate in play. He states “There are not two sides defined by a wall. This is one landscape, divided,” The landscape of Eastville and St Pauls never wanted division. And now they have an area to rebuild relationships and bring the communities together. Rael continues to state ‘Play can be an act of resistance’ which is even more evident in the works of French photographer JR(2017), whose work displays publicly commentary on social topics. Through which he helped reconnect residence in a similar manor either side of the American border, which he explores in his documentary paper and glue, retaining his anonymity He sees his work as a form of graffiti, play, but resistance to the everyday "It's about breaking down barriers," "With humour, there is life." The unknown photographer restores identities of the unheard and nameless
As a result of these interventions of ‘play,’ skateboarding, graffiti, biking, all perceived as counter cultures, have unintentionally intervened for the betterment of the area. Even forming community groups which volunteer and invest time and money back into the space One group, LitterARTI, host a flea market under the colonnade with the intention of reconnecting the disjointed communities. In speaking with Annali Grimes(2022), organiser of the m32 flea market, she said in response to why they chose that location "the skatepark was the only positive thing in the area . The space is bright and vibrant, a good place to bring people together from cut off communities," The area is more than a skatepark now.
The underpass has grown into an unofficial agora for the local community creating and responding to their own needs. A contemporary stoa running adjacent to the road provides relief and enjoyment instead of scepticism and an area to avoid altogether. People care about the space now There is a Japanese art of repairing pottery known as Kintsugi, where the breakages are sealed with lacquer and dust and finished with silver or gold. The philosophy behind it treats repairs as part of the object’s history. In repairing objects in such a way indicates value in its sentiment and worth to a person. Ernest Hemingway(1929), the esteemed American novelist, wrote ‘The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. ’ Emphasising the shortness of life and that everyone should take advantage of life's joys This adds deeper meaning to the site as builders are inadvertently healing the community, not just through repairing a crack in the concrete but through the act of nurturing a communal space, it acts as a precedent for others
WHO DOES THE SPACE BELONG TO:
What is interesting now is the argument of ownership. After all the location is a public space. The perception of the space previously was that it belonged to everyone but designed for no one. Janet Echelman, an artist specializing in public displays of sculpture states ‘I believe that public space should be intentional: it should be obvious that you belong.’ But here does not feel like it is for everyone but belongs to the community in which the skatepark has been built. Borden outlines that countercultural and counter-spatial activities most commonly take place in the open space of streets and squares that, as “these are the spaces have not been dominated by the high ideologies and powers of the state.” Skateboarders see the public domain as a stage for performance, not simple a transitional space between point A and point B. However, performing on a stage where you are not always welcome is a tough task. Therefore, looking for an urban space to call their own is important Not referring to skateparks, which are perceived as engineered creativity, there is not the same critique of the city Skateboarding is mostly repressed and legislated in public spaces, which are often privately owned. Tom Bell (2018), a skater helping build some of the obstacle at the M32 DIY skatepark, “When you put time and effort and love into making something, you have a connection with it” continuing to say, “When I skate on the objects that I’ve built, I feel totally comfortable on them”. Presenting the idea that a space created by and for the community around them creates a shared identity and a shared ownership. Although the space does not officially belong to them Hill described clearly what it means to the local community, stating that the space below the M32 has been ‘adopted and loved ’ They might not have been the owners of the space originally, but from the perspective of the community they are now.
PERCEIVABLY PUBLIC SPACE
RESPECTFUL BOUNDARY OF THE SKATEPARK
However anarchic the principles of the skatepark seem, the frontier of impromptu construction and experimentation stops when reaching the threshold of the overpass. Respectfully establishing itself within the shadow and not encroaching on the, perceivably more public, footpath Unintentionally or intentionally converging on a passive mutual agreement with the community. The skateboarders and builders have delineated their boundary of ownership within the public realm. Because of this, the council officially holds an impartial position However, have since removed the boundary fence opening the space up, increasing the permeability of the site and deterring crime and negative activities. There is a change in the tactility of the surface as it changes from dusty and gravelly texture of long trodden path to a smooth firm surface ideal for skateboarding This change in material outlines the limits of the skateparks ownership. The skateboarders make use of the ambiguity of ownership, defining the space as their own.
CONCLUSION
It is clear that authority and leaders, Bristol, and Gloucester councils in this instance, can abuse their position of power, often in the pursuit of goals of commercial benefit to the detriment of the people This led to the creation of the negative spaces under the M32. This is a product of the capitalist age we are in. However, the guerrilla form of architecture, that functioned as a frontier of change for the area, was certainly a catalyst to providing a healthier communal space. Rather than let the architecture and the authority of the city decide what the space becomes, the community have taken the power into their own hands and transformed the space into something usable, communal, and beneficial Ultimately this has only been achieved with the assistance of local skateboarders’ and their attitude to challenge the banal, through the rejection of the conventional use of space, outlined in Lefebvre’s philosophy. The space is public in terms of access, but undoubtedly belongs to the people of Easton, Eastville, and St Pauls now Making the argument that the ownership of an area is not always determined but influenced by the practice and use of that space The rebellious intervention respectfully reasserts ownership over the forgotten space. The power has an unexpressed respect for the intervention as they continue to allow the skatepark and area to evolve in an impromptu manner. As the community are not just undoing the mistakes caused by the initial intervention but facilitating a betterment for the local area
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