Skateboarding, Space and the City

Architecture and the Body

Professor Iain Borden (University College London, UK)

$260

Hardback

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English

Berg Publishers
01 September 2010

Landscape art & architecture; Cultural studies; Urban communities; Rollerblading, skateboarding, etc

Skateboarders are an increasingly common feature of the urban environment - recent estimates total 40 million world-wide. We are all aware of their often extraordinary talent and manoeuvres on the city streets. This book is the first detailed study of the urban phenomenon of skateboarding. It looks at skateboarding history from the surf-beaches of California in the 1950s, through the purpose-built skateparks of the 1970s, to the street-skating of the present day and shows how skateboarders experience and understand the city through their sport. Dismissive of authority and convention, skateboarders suggest that the city is not just a place for working and shopping but a true pleasure-ground, a place where the human body, emotions and energy can be expressed to the full. The huge skateboarding subculture that revolves around graphically-designed clothes and boards, music, slang and moves provides a rich resource for exploring issues of gender, race, class, sexuality and the family. As the author demonstrates, street-style skateboarding, especially characteristic of recent decades, conducts a performative critique of architecture, the city and capitalism. Anyone interested in the history and sociology of sport, urban geography or architecture will find this book riveting.

By: Professor Iain Borden (University College London UK)
Imprint: Berg Publishers
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 646g
ISBN: 9781859734889
ISBN 10: 185973488X
Pages: 318
Publication Date: 01 September 2010
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Iain Borden Director of Architectural History and Theory and Reader in Architecture and Urban Culture at the Bartlett,University College London

Reviews for Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body

The book is excellently researched and draws upon an exhaustive aumount of secondary data on skateboarding. A highly original and extremely well written text that discusses the historical and cultural meaning of skateboarding through an engagin reading of the work of Lefebvre and others. * University of Sussex *