Cultivate Cultures: The Study of Friction and Wear on Mating Surfaces

Cultivate Cultures is a design project for a skateboard park in a discarded space situated under the I-610 highway overpass in New Orleans’ City Park. At first glance, this leftover space is viewed as a spoiled and irreparable area. The project is a direct response to the overwhelming criticism against New Orleans City Park as a haven for a genteel class of “good old boys” and privileged folk. Critics question why the park maintains 3 golf courses, a tennis facility and equestrian stables for 500 horses when close to 50% of the city’s inhabitants live under the national poverty line. Simultaneously, skateboarders in New Orleans complain that they have been denied a place to skate resulting in arrests and aggressive encounters with police. City Park planners, with the assistance of the Tulane City Center, have acknowledged the need to add fresh and affordable recreational activity to the park that attracts a broader population of the city’s inhabitants. The scheme proposes to develop this residual space under the I-610 highway for a new skateboard facility. This is the first step towards augmenting park activities that support cultural, social and recreational diversity as well as community remediation. Save and Synthesize The Recovery and Reintegration of Residual SpaceCultivate Cultures is devised around the strategy of flexible programming and adaptive landforms/surfaces. The design features sculpted ground formations to mediate the high impact of infrastructure with the more passive ecosystems of plants and wildlife. The outcome is a fluid framework of interacting ground formations that host a variety of programmatic elements.Diversify the Function of Infrastructure Challenging the Mono-functionality of InfrastructureCultivate Cultures tackles the stoic and unapologetic presence of the I-610 highway in City Park. The skateboard park embraces the girthy construction of the overpass with its commanding concrete structure, turning it into a point of destination with a ready-made canopy to protect the deep skating basins from New Orleans’ constant subtropical rains. In addition, the dimly lit space with its long spans becomes a refuge from the brutality of the summer sun. The constant murmur and vibration of the traffic overhead hearkens the bustle of the city. Wet | Muffled | Lit Water Management, Sound Control, Carbon Emissions and IlluminationBerms are used to generate the spatial structure of the site by responding to a diverse range of ecological, social and recreational opportunities. This new topography is not only modeled according to skateboarding regulation but other mitigating factors that include noise control, the filtering of carbon emissions and ground water management A set of delicate, interlacing, sinuous lines are threaded throughout the site in the form of ramified ribs, bars, redoubts and channels, creating a complex network with the aim of performing a multitude of functions throughout the site and larger context of the park. These features become flexible and extensible elements that combine skateboarding and drainage, wildlife, habitat planting and lighting where new individual and communal activities may flourish.

Volume Editors
Ikhlas Sabouni & Jorge Vanegas