Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Status: Construction Begins 2024
Scale: 5002FT
Situated in Alcantara, just inland from the Port of Lisbon, this project is comprised of 17 Lioz Abancado stones from the Carrasqueira Quarry. The lilac-toned marble—which can be seen throughout Lisbon, from the construction of park benches to the Monastery of Jerónimos and the Tower of Belém—renders the project materially familiar, even while it maintains a certain functional mysteriousness. Not readily pinpointed as a bench, a sculpture, a playground or a skate structure, but
perhaps some mixture of all the above, this structure remains open to the interpretation of its users. For skateboarders, specifically, it aims to be a hybrid in another sense. If the finding and reappropriation of urban objects and spaces is one of the fundamental acts of skateboardering, then what role remains for authorship? Can an object designed with skateboarding in mind ever be appreciated in the same way as one that is accidental? Is something automatically lost? Or is value of a space measured through time and energy spent there, through joy and imagination brought into a form regardless of its origin story. This project explores that paradox.
