Skate Park Design & Construction

Learning new skills is the funnest part of skating, whether one is a neophyte or a grizzled veteran of the sport. Our skate parks are designed to facilitate skills development by providing abundant stepping-stones--terrain which provides subtle gradations of challenge to skaters' physical and creative abilities.

Grind bars of varying heights and difficulty, hips that facilitate aerials on small terrain, flyout lines, and gentle landing zones for huge air stunt jumps are just a few of the ways in which we make it easier for skaters to progress. It's hard to ride when one is strapped for speed, so we employ precisely positioned speed generators of various classes to focus accessible speed lines wherever they are needed.We include plenty of over-vertical riding surface in each of our skate park deisgns in order to take full advantage of centrifugal force.

Skate Park Design

The social experience is a huge part of skateboarding, so we include several hangout spots in each park. These usually consist of places to sit outside of major speed lines and close to common drop-in points, like tall banks, vert walls, or slopes leading to popular ledges. To further enhance the social aspect of our parks, we engineer the terrain to minimize conflict between users, as discussed below.

Skate Park Design & Safety Considerations

The recognition of varied skill levels and skating styles among skate park users is crucial to the incorporation of safety considerations in a skate park design. Collisions are a major source of skate park injuries and conflicts between users, especially in skate parks, which allow riders to attain relatively high velocities. Collision frequency can be reduced considerably by separating high-speed terrain from low speed terrain, including semi-isolated zones, and by providing a beginner area separate from the more advanced features.

Deep bowls are typically ridden at the highest speeds. Street features like ledges and rails are ridden much slower. Much like the slow lane on a freeway, most street features in our parks are placed around the periphery. This eliminates conflict between riders using the bowls and those sessioning the rails, ledges, and assorted street-inspired features.

Skate Park Design in Florence, Oregon

Another way to reduce collisions is the use of semi-isolated zones-areas that can be sessioned as a separate entity but which also connect to the rest of the park, thereby maintaining flow. For example, if one bowl has two sections that can be ridden as half pipes, two groups can ride the bowl simultaneously when the park gets crowded. Then when the crowd thins out, riders can utilize the entire bowl in one run.

Many skate park users are under the age of 12. It's imperative that these youngest skaters have a place to ride safely out of the way of more advanced riders. In skate park designs over 10,000 square feet, we advocate dedicating at least 2000 sq feet to beginner terrain--gentle inclines, rounded lips, small transitional features, and easy rails /ledges. The beginner area should be as far as possible from the most advanced terrain, and close to a main entrance, parking lot, or viewing area so that parents can easily watch their kids without having to traipse through the park

You can find more picturs in our Skate Park Design examples page.

 

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