Studio 3B: Balwin Hills Park Charette

The goal of this design exercise is to integrate a 57-acre park into the urban fabric of Los Angeles, California. Part of this exercise is to pick a word and use it in the expression of the concept. The word I chose for this project is gravity.


For this project, skateboarding is used as an illustration of gravity as a design concept. This is achieved by incorporating a skateboard park covering several acres into the existing park.


This idea is reinforced first by carving out the hillside with multiple levels for the skate park all connected through a series of "roll-in ramps."


It is further developed by designing concrete walks throughout the park that transition on the sides onto the retaining walls and curbs. In some places the transition curves up just a little while in others, it curves up much higher, some even overhead.


Walks are designed to be "skate-able" and are also fully accessible to pedestrians while wrapping around and through the park providing impressive views of the vast urban landscape of Los Angeles.


Skateboarding was chosen as an expression of gravity because it (gravity) is one of the two factors that govern the physical act of skateboarding. The other being friction.

But more importantly, building a massive skate park covering several acres of the hillside is an expression of an inherently urban culture that already exists in every city in the world.


This project was a two week long charette in the middle of the spring semester 2003 taught by Tal Safdie and Ricardo Rabines. This concept was presented using eight 11X17 images lined up horizontally reading from left to right.