The Hybrid

Abstract

Local skateboarders in Bandung still play skateboard on the streets since they consider to not have a designated/adequate space to practice their passion. Although the government addressed this issue by building the 1st skatepark only in 2014, it ended up being largely neglected/unused for its bad overall design and for being too small for accommodating the increasing number of skateboarders. The failure of such a skatepark was also due to the wrong/poor quality materials and construction techniques implemented, since no skilled-labor has been exploited. On the other hand, even well-designed/built skateparks sometimes fail to meet skateboarders’ needs. This is due to the nature of skateboarding, being a creative and evolutive discipline that continuously demands different grounds, obstacles, heights, generally speaking an increasing level of challenges. Currently, skateparks fail to facilitate interactions between skateboarders and other city users, while fostering the already common idea of skateparks as social “ghettos”. Conversely, architects can potentially think the design of a skatepark as an architectural challenge, being an interactive public space with specific topological requisites and social implications. The design target envisions the merging of a skatepark into an architectural multipurpose building. By doing so, the resulting hybrid-building helps skateboarders and cityusers to dialogue, thus becoming an attractive “urban facilitator” of functions in the city on different levels. The skatepark merges at the level of the roof of the hosting building to ensure a certain degree of physical separation while still allowing the two parts to dialogue. The multipurpose building is considered as adaptable since it can host a manifold number of fix functions (mosque, distro shops, bar-lounge, hostel, workshops) as well as pop-up or temporary ones (food stalls, spontaneous meetings, playground for young and elders, skate events) that take place in different periods during the day/week/month. Skateboarders are therefore motivated to make use of both the skatepark as well as the underneath facility. Specifically the workshop rooms will be used to produce custom boards or new skateramps. Furthermore, the hybrid-building is built with “plantation by-products” woods such as coconut tree and rubberwood tree as well as the more typical Indonesian bamboo and sengon. Coherently utilizing these type of woods instead of teak or similar from tropical rain-forests results in a more sustainable and cheaper solution that at the same is endowed with an added architectural value and unique “identity” that can only be given by exploiting the right mix of local resources. Moreover, a wooden construction allows the skatepark to be easily flexible/adaptable according to skateboarders’ needs. The skatepark is composed by customizableelements that can be mounted/dismantled with ease in order to achieve a possible ever-changing skateableterrain thus solving the problem of skateparks considered as limiting playground that constrains skateboarders’ expressivity.