Stone-Ideas.com 
The aim of the designers of Various Associates was to move the sport and its accessories away from the image of street culture
Now China also has a marble skate park, and it was about time. We had already reported on such installations in the Italian town of Pietrasanta in 2013 and previously on experiments with granite from a Spanish stonemasonry school. And: In Norway, in 2021, the beverage brand Red Bull had the young athletes dance with their boards on the steep walls made of Larvikite Granite in the Lundhs quarry.
The new facility in Shanghai, completed in 2021, is in a different class to anything we have seen before. It is located on the top floor of the Taikoo Li on the Foreshore shopping and leisure center in Shanghai and aims to give the sport a new image, as the designers from Various Associates put it: “The design team hopes to erase the stereotype that street is equal to cheap, using the all-marble skateboard park as a symbol and signal, blurring the traditional boundaries of street and mainstream cultural values.”
The client, Avenue & Son, produces top-class boards and the associated fashion wear and sells other branded products for the youth segment. There is no doubt that the brownish flooring with its cloudy structure gives the boards and everything around them an atmosphere of elegance and nobility.
In this world of experience on the upper floor of the consumer center, at least the forms of the world in which the sport usually takes place can be found: Ramps and steps have been created inside the sales pavilion, with metal handrails, as if the skaters were supposed to show off their skills there. You can feel like you are outside inside, as the outer walls are made of glass – openness, also in a figurative sense, is the image that the industry gives itself.
And it is interesting to see: the marble does not seem to contradict being cool, which is a central concern of youth culture.
The ramps continue outside. There they are really used for skating. Incidentally, the sport has been an Olympic discipline since 2020.
We asked the designers how the stone can withstand the strain of the boards, but did not receive an answer by the time we went to press.
The flagship store is probably not intended as a skate park for everyone, but rather for events.
The surfaces have probably also been strengthened with chemicals; in the screenshot from a video from elsewhere announcing Avenue & Son’s collaboration with the sports brand Adidas, you can see a person trying to scrape the usual black skate marks off the edges of granite stones.
Experience from elsewhere teaches that, at least with granite, the edges of the stone rarely break away. However, over time they become rounded and take on a dirty black color.
Avenue & Son: Video
Photos: SFAP
(07.10.2024, USA: 10.07.2024)