Skateparks as performative landscapes: The case of ‘Long Live Southbank’

Ben Bowne [LinkedIn]

The Southbank Skatepark, also known as 'The Undercroft,' symbolizes a vibrant cultural nexus in London, deeply intertwined with skateboarding and artistic expression since the 1970s. This essay examines its evolution into a celebrated communal space and tourist attraction, positioned against the backdrop of urban redevelopment and cultural commodification. By employing Trancik's concept of lost spaces, the research illustrates how this unintentional architectural landscape fosters user engagement, serving as a dynamic canvas for cultural interaction. The analysis is structured around four key themes: consumption, materiality, performance, and canvas, utilizing anthropological methods, including qualitative interviews with skaters, to understand their meaningful connections to this space.

Key findings indicate that The Undercroft transcends its original purpose as a mere skatepark; it acts as a performative landscape reflecting broader societal narratives. As skateboarders and graffiti artists contribute to its physical and cultural evolution, the architecture itself becomes a participant in this dialogue, challenging traditional notions of consumption and value. The political implications of preservation efforts, highlighted through the 'Long Live Southbank' campaign, further emphasize the skatepark's significance as a site of community resistance and identity. Ultimately, this research underscores the critical intersection of architecture, culture, and community, revealing The Undercroft as a vital space that embodies the lived experiences of its users and the ongoing negotiations of urban existence.

Often referred to as 'The Mecca of Skateboarding' and 'A pilgrimage site', The Southbank Skatepark, formally known as 'The Undercroft', stands out with its unique features. This area, a cultural hub for artists in London since the 1970s, boasts one hundred square meters of concrete and seventeen foundational support columns (Figure 1). Notably, this space was built without a specific purpose, inviting anyone to fill it, a concept that aligns with Trancik's (1991) notion of lost spaces.

This essay will explore why the commonly coined 'Southbank Skatepark' has become a tourist attraction on the scale of Time Out Magazine's recognition and a communal space for young people (Time Out London, 2019). It is a political landscape that has seen court cases and has been a canvas for artists, films, and brands. This essay will explore these notions by considering how 'The Undercroft' transcends its physical boundaries as an unintentional concrete space and how architecture has allowed it to become a performative space repeatedly consumed by London's population. The four-part structure of 'consuming', 'materiality', 'performance' and 'canvas' will facilitate such an exploration. Using an anthropological analytic approach, this essay will draw upon research on architectural and material culture studies. Such research has been furthered through qualitative fieldwork at the site, the results from which have been included in this critical analysis. This essay will rely on Smitheram's (2011) seminal work on performativity, the understanding of an architectural landscape as a composition of its embodied acts throughout, stemming from Butler's influential work regarding similar themes.

Given this approach, this essay acknowledges the positionality of having one sole researcher conducting informal, semi-structured interviews with the users of 'The Undercroft'. Acknowledging this positionality provides the foundation for the findings to be presented reflexively and unbiasedly; intentional surveys are taken to fulfil a specific aim (Madison, 2019). With prior skateboarding experience, having Southbank Skatepark as a focus of this essay was possible due to my knowledge of skating colloquialisms and attitudes, allowing me to connect with other skateboarders. This background facilitates what Attride-Stirling (2001) coined 'rigorous' and 'thorough' research. Despite this, it was only following this fieldwork and research that I, as both a skateboarder and anthropologist, completely comprehended the architecture's effect on 'The Undercroft' as a space and a place.

Consuming ‘The Undercroft’

Understanding how people occupy buildings after they are produced helps anthropologists appreciate the human-building relationship and cultural meaning of a space. In other words, one must see not only the landscape and architecture as products but also how such spaces are subsequently interpreted and 'consumed' by people (Maudlin and Vellinga, 2014). Jo Littler reminds us of the critical distinction between consumption and consumerism. Consumption is the use of materials, whereas consumerism is the economic logic and capitalist system that promotes increased consumption, resulting in private profit (Littler, 2012). This concept is fundamental later in this essay and will be referred to when discussing the attempts to exploit 'The Undercroft' for its economic potential.

How a building is consumed and how the users of a building inscribe cultural meanings into its surfaces and spaces shifts thinking beyond its original purpose (Maudlin and Vellinga, 2014; Goodman and Goodman, 2016). Anthropologists have discussed how the producers and designers of architecture tend to be overemphasised compared to the people who inhabit, interpret and enjoy the spaces (Miller, 2006). This suggests that a building is viewed all too often in relation to its intended purpose and cultural meaning as opposed to its actual use and meaning according to those who occupy it. This is analogous to asking children if they enjoy the blueprints of a playground - it doesn't work. It felt essential for me to spend time in 'The Undercoft' talking with skaters, although acknowledging that our cultural understanding was one of 2024 and not of 'The Undercroft's' whole lifetime.

Arthur, a 23-year-old skater from Brixton, told me how "people learn things here [The Undercroft], it's like the graffiti artists and skaters mix, and we learn from each other sometimes. I can almost write my name! [he laughs]". Within this informal, semi-structured interview, 'The Undercroft' was presented as a place of learning, and communal education was a recurrent theme in this conversation. These themes align with my later interview with Callum, who proposed 'The Undercroft' as a 'creative workshop.' These comments made by Arthur and Callum position them as cultural and artistic leaders and teachers of this space. Thus, these informal interviews resonate with the idea that 'The Undercroft' is a place of belonging and where people could "grow up" (Rinvolucri, 2018).

The second finding, which became apparent in the following conversations, was the temporal shift in the consumption of 'The Undercroft' from those who had skated for a long time in this space compared to those who were recent practitioners. Colton spoke of the fact that Southbank Skatepark was "better back in the day when there was 'less showmanship' involved". Colton and others viewed 'The Undercroft' as a place which began as a location devoted to the ritual of skateboarding. Still, today, with the increase in social media and popularising an 'aesthetic', people tend to come to skate with less interest in the hobby than previously. It is this evidence that demonstrates that 'The Undercroft' is a culturally dynamic place where cultural meanings can shift over time. These notions of 'practitioner', being an 'artist', and the idea of ritually attending one specific place draws 'Southbank Skatepark' as a performative concept, again illustrating Smitheram's (2011) concept of performativity.

Western ideas of consumption have often centred around extractive ideologies, the complete usage of and resultant decay and deterioration of a landscape (Domínguez and Luoma, 2020). While there are signs of decay in 'The Undercroft', such as cracks in the concrete of the mushroom pillars and fractures in the rails from the impact of skateboarding, this is not deterioration as far as the skateboarders are concerned. These marks of decay are marks of history that add to the story of the place. These explicit results present the current usage of this space as a contradiction to stereotypical Western ideas of consumption (Bocock 2008). 'The Skatepark' is a rare example of consumer success, not over-extracted. It is this history embedded in the concrete of the Undercroft, on top of current plans to enrol traditional notions of 'extraction' in this space, which has fueled the politicisation of 'Southbank Skatepark', an idea developed in the third section of this paper.

The Materiality of ‘The Undercroft’

In many ways, the relationship between a skatepark and its skateboarders is distinct. The energetic force and friction between the skateboarder and the surfaces on which they travel are intuitively and subtly felt by the skateboarder and those who spend time in this liminal space. The next section of this essay analyses what it is about the architecture and materials in 'The Undercroft' that make it so disparate from other skating and exhibition spaces. An initial material analysis of the space categorises the concrete foundations as a sustaining, durable, resistant and reliable material (Figure 2).

The Undercrofts' materiality is central to the homeliness of the environment and has allowed brutal, intensive, repeated skating on the surfaces over the past fifty years. The imposing physicality of this building has brought assurance to many of the skaters by providing a permanent presence in their lives. Stewart Brand suggests that 'almost no buildings adapt well; they're designed not to adapt' Stewart Brand (199). Further to this, Brand suggests that architecture as a concept is, however, more permanent and an 'illusion' compared to the building it becomes (Brand 1995). But what happens when the intended use of the architectural design becomes something else? Skateboarding challenges architectural design. It is rare that architects design a space with skateboarders in mind. Supporting this idea, Rinvolucri (2018) comments that "skateboarding is like a moss that grows in the corners." And so, in response to Stewart Brand and contrary to his argument, this essay argues that the Undercroft does adapt and decays positively and works 'with' its users in a physical and emotional temporal engagement. Definitively, it is the materiality of 'The Undercroft' which sees it fulfil Schurmer Smith's idea of a 'dialogue of meaning'; buildings within their landscapes continually contribute to an active dialogue between their users and their purpose (Schurmer Smith, 2001:3). This is a poignant notion which Jack, a younger skater, inadvertently reflects on. He described his "difficult home situation" and that "The Undercroft is where I truly feel at peace; it's where I can clear my head, man". Here, we are reminded of the essential aspects of 'The Undercroft's' permanent yet adaptive materiality and its ability to create an emotional and reflexive support structure for skaters like Jack.

‘The Undercroft’ as a Performative Landscape and Political Tract

In 2014, 'The Undercroft' was threatened with closure when 'The Southbank Centre' changed management hands; there were provisional plans to transform the whole space into retail units as part of a £120m redevelopment scheme (Rinvolucri, 2018). The skateboarders spoke of feeling displaced from their home, taken from a place of learning and community where, for decades, the more experienced skateboarders, the 'elders' would teach the less experienced younger skateboarders not through formal lessons but through informal interaction and connection. This reflects Michalski et al. (2023) notions of community being more than a physical connection between people but a multidimensional composite idea.

In an interview, Ben spoke of 'The Undercroft' as a space that has always been skateboarders' 'land' from the beginning. In a sense, skaters view themselves as indigenous to the space. The terms' turf' and 'land' were referenced within the informal interview, both heavily territorial. Within anthropology, how states and governments will attempt to remove small Indigenous communities from space to capitalise on land for the purpose of economic profit has long been documented (Mays, 2022). Buildings have memories, and in the case of 'The Undercroft', decades of learning and development of skateboarding as a practice have taken place. Some of the greatest skaters have grown up in the Undercroft (Kafka, 2019). Ben commented that clearing 'The Undercroft' shows the willingness to 'uproot' and 'destroy' what the skaters have created. Ben suggested that the redevelopment values the landscape on a purely 'economic basis', and the skaters view it as an artistic home. Would the state build a shopping centre in the Houses of Parliament? I think not.

With the threat of closure, a campaign entitled 'Long Live Southbank' was launched to oppose plans by The Southbank Centre and Lambeth council. Interestingly, the campaign logo (Figure 3) utilised the iconic mushroom-shaped column. This is reminiscent of the symbolic power of architecture in the political landscape. The iconography of this pillar reminded all people of the vital link between place, architecture, and community. Thus, the columns have a performative identity; they are the pillars of belonging and emotion-filled towers providing the foundations, both literally and symbolically, for a space and people's livelihoods. This purpose transcends any economic justification.

Continuing this performative analysis, 'The Undercroft' builds its own performative identity through striking symbolism (Hebel and Wagner, 2011), a key example being the concrete columns. Hebel and Wagner's (2011) study critically appraises this across America and Mexico, and their principles of pictures, colours, and iconography that create a cultural landscape are present across the Southbank. These ideas are reflected in the skater and vice versa. Therefore, this essay utilises Latour's "ActorNetwork Theory" analytic in that 'The Undercroft' and skateboarders construct each other's identity, the idea that landscapes serve as cultural curators in their own right (Latour, 2005). Dark, dingy lighting, damp walls, and concrete canvasses contribute to a rebellious identity often associated with the skater inhabitants. With common discourse viewing skateboarders as a group outside of state rule and order (as most skating is done in places where it is forbidden), the literally 'underground' nature of The Undercroft's architectural landscape reflects a skateboarder's societal identity. Regarding performance, it can be argued that The Undercroft performs to our preconceived ideas and stereotypes of skateboarding and graffiti art.

Here, we see how the bare-bone brutalist concrete architecture of 'The Undercroft' symbolises a space unmolded by the people within the state. Overall, we see how architecture can lead to the development of individuals, communities, and societies (Horton and Kraftl, 2013) and how landscape can be contextualised within a political ideology (Della Dora, Lorimer and Daniels, 2011) through notions of libertarianism, inclusivity and individual growth.

'The Undercroft' and 'The Skatepark' as both a stage and a canvas

Daniel Maudlin and Marcel Vellinga see architecture specifically as a creative process, and the same can be said for The Undercroft as it has been turned into a creative decay where skateboarders chip away at concrete, making their marks and graffiti artists 'vandalise' its walls, telling their stories (Maudlin and Vellinga, 2014). Regarding the performativity of 'The Undercroft landscape', this final section argues that it has become a literal stage on which artists perform for audiences, as well as a metaphorical stage for a 'skater' identity (given earlier).

Furthermore, this space is a stage for London to perform to tourists. It attracts large crowds and international visitors. This has helped amplify street and skateboarding culture on a global scale, with Southbank Skatepark speaking to London's cultural diversity and energy (Time Out London, 2019).

When thinking of this landscape as a stage, we can thus visualise it within a frame in time that holds a narrative. The Skatepark can only be fully understood in context when its history and story come alongside it. Framing the space in this way gives purpose to the landscape as something meant to be there instead of something that happens to be there. If we see the immediacy of the enjoyment from skaters, graffiti artists and observers, we are more likely to recognise the critical importance of space.

Conclusion

Conclusively, this research essay has presented the dual-natured 'Undercroft' or 'Southbank Skatepark' as more than a recreational space. This versatile landscape is one consumed by tourists, skaters, academics, and journalists, one that houses cultural expressions, artists, and performers, and it provides the basis of creative performativity and community interaction. Because of these findings, this essay presents the space as a crucial site for the interaction between society, culture, and architecture. The essay speaks to the broader body of anthropological research regarding the interaction between material culture, the built environment and social anthropology. This essay demonstrates that bodily and phenomenological experiences of space combine all three factors, as well as the performativity of people within a role. In this case, this relates to 'skaters', 'tourists' and 'observers'. With these critical messages, this essay has shown the importance of anthropology in addressing how local community initiatives contrast larger state-built environments and how this conflict is experienced. Through utilising academia and my primary research, this essay has presented a nuanced and sophisticated critical analysis of the interdisciplinary research required to fully comprehend dynamic, 'lost' spaces (Trancik, 1991). What permeates this research is the complexity and power of architecture in creating an experienced, phenomenological environment and the importance of such an experience at a local level for small-scale communities such as those who inhabit the Southbank Skatepark.

References

Attride-Stirling, J. (2001). Thematic Networks: an Analytic Tool for Qualitative Research. Qualitative Research, 1(3), pp.385–405. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/146879410100100307.

Battye, R. and Dezeen (2019). Photo of ‘The Undercorft’. Dezeen. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/08/08/undercroft-skatepark-southbank-centre-london-feilden-cleggbradley-studios/.

Bocock, R. (2008). Consumption. Routledge

Brand, S. (1995). How Buildings Learn. Penguin.

della Dora, V., Lorimer, H. and Daniels, S. (2011). Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds) (1988) The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Progress in Human Geography, 35(2), pp.264– 270. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132510397462.

Domínguez, L. and Luoma, C. (2020). Decolonising Conservation Policy: How Colonial Land and Conservation Ideologies Persist and Perpetuate Indigenous Injustices at the Expense of the Environment. Land, [online] 9(3), p.65. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/land9030065.

Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (2019). Digital Blueprint of ‘The Undercroft’. Available at: https://fcbstudios.com/projects/southbank-undercroft-skate-space/.

Fox, K. and Kohda, C. (2013). Can skaters save their South Bank home? – gallery. The Guardian. [online] 11 May. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2013/may/11/skateboardersfight-southbank-skate-park-closure-gallery [Accessed 22 Apr. 2024].

Hebel, U.J. and Wagner, C. (2011). Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies: Approaches, Perspectives, Case Studies from Europe and America. [online] Google Books. Walter de Gruyter. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=AVMJVblNljIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA401&dq=iconography+in +the+built+environment+building+identity+&ots=gMys5pLtDZ&sig=gUvdfTFXO4IuRrhtQIGyhUUjpc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=iconography%20in%20the%20built%20environment%20building %20identity&f=false [Accessed 22 Apr. 2024].

Horton, J. and Kraftl, P. (2013). Cultural Geographies. Routledge. doi:https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797489.

Kafka, G. (2019). A Brutalist Landmark and Skateboarding Mecca in London Is Restored. [online] Metropolis. Available at: https://metropolismag.com/projects/southbank-centre-undercroftrenovation/.

Littler, J. (2012). Consumerism. Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0036

Long Live Southbank (2017). ‘Long Live Southbank’ campaign logo. Available at: https://s3.eu-west2.amazonaws.com/southbank-static/index.html

Madison, D.S. (2019). Critical Ethnography - Method, Ethics and Performance. Sage Publications.

Maudlin, D. and Vellinga, M. (2014). Consuming architecture : on the occupation, appropriation and interpretation of buildings. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

Mays, K.T. (2022). THE CITIES WE CALL HOME : Indigeneity, Race and Settler‐Colonial Urbanisms. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13133.

Michalski, C., Ragunathan, A., Foster, A., Pagalan, L., Chu, C., Diemert, L.M., Helliwell, J.F., Urajnik, D., Speidel, R., Malti, T., Fierheller, D., Fusca, L., Zenlea, I., McKean, S. and Rosella, L.C. (2023). Towards a community-driven definition of community wellbeing: A qualitative study of residents. PloS one, [online] 18(11), p.e0294721. doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294721.

Nasreldin (2024). Long Live Southbank Skate Spot | Museum of Youth Culture. [online] Museum of Youth Culture. Available at: https://www.museumofyouthculture.com/long-live-southbank-skate-spot/.

Rinvolucri, B. (2018). How skaters make cities safer – and the fight to save the Southbank skate spot. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/07/skatersmake-cities-safer-fight-save-southbank-centre-skatepark.

Shurmer-Smith, P. (2001). Doing Cultural Geography. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Smitheram, J. (2011). Spatial Performativity/Spatial Performance. Architectural Theory Review, 16(1), pp.55–69. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2011.560387.

Swain, J. and King, B. (2022). Using Informal Conversations in Qualitative Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, [online] 21 (1), p.160940692210850. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221085056.

Tilley, C.Y. (2019). London’s urban landscape: another way of telling. London: UCL Press.

Time Out London. (2019). Southbank Skate Space. [online] Available at: https://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/southbank-skate-space.

Trancik, R. (1991). Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design. [online] Google Books. John Wiley & Sons. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=UcdJxonfeGMC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=spaces+built+wit hout+purpose+to+be+built+by+anyone+&ots=QSUB6vQOc&sig=XYugSQ7L5KfRaYY6JfHmuWMUAMc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=spaces%20built%20without%20 purpose%20to%20be%20built%20by%20anyone&f=false [Accessed 22 Apr. 2024].