Neal, Janson2026-05-042026-05-042026-05-042026-04-20https://hdl.handle.net/10012/23164This thesis examines the intersection of skateboarding and architecture, proposing that skateboarding is, in effect, a spatial and architectural pedagogy. This work aims to prove that through acts of movement, seeing, and reappropriation, skateboarders learn from and teach through their engagement with the built environment. The act of skateboarding reveals how materials, spatial conditions, and social interactions shape the way architecture is experienced and understood. Skateboarding turns the city into both a classroom and a stage, revealing the architectural potential beyond its anticipated program. The foundation of my research begins with my own lived experience as a skateboarder and a student of architecture. Drawing from both experiences I intend to prove this thesis’ argument that skateboarding is an architectural pedagogy. The research centers around filtering through and documenting architecturally interesting and significant skatespots—the informal sites of skateboarding—presented in skate videos and magazines. From this archiving and analysis of skate media, spots were selected and catalogued for analysis and further investigation as case studies. These spot investigations and documentations include actively skating them, drawing, photography, measuring, on site conversations, and observations. Skateboarders have a unique lived experience and perspective that offers insight into the stuff, people and place of architecture. Architecture is made up of stuff. Stuff supports the spatial and material dimension of skateboarding. It is the architectural elements, the surfaces, textures, and forms that define space, inform use and how it feels to move through space. In this thesis stuff falls into three conditions: edges, surfaces, and voids, and from there investigated and defined spot typologies. It is clear that skateboarding does foster an understanding of form and architecture. Skateboarding is so invested in the stuff of architecture that it has even developed its own architectural lexicon that is unversally shared throughout skateboarding and other peripheral action sports. Architectural elements like curbs, rails, banks, and ledges become moments of exploration and sites of performance. Skateboarding transforms these everyday materials and assemblies into an design knowledge, demonstrating how physical conditions teach through active engagement. The skateboarder is not only a user engaged in convetional understanding of stuff, but also an active and subversive participant and critic of said stuff. The investigation of these various uses and engagements falls within the category of people. Through exploring the skateboarder’s lived experience of spot-finding, modification, and resistance, we understand that skaters engage with the city on their own terms. They reinterpret public space, ownership, and play—sometimes being perceived as vandals and misfits—which often results in adversity and resistance. Skateboarding challenges conventional boundaries and expectations between occupant and designer. Skateboarding’s spatial participation is proof of an understanding and appreciation of architecture and form; additionally, this participation forces others to see space from a new perspective to combat the act. Skateboarding teaches both skaters and non-skaters about architectural form and the response it ignites. Place, or spot, is the composite of the greater architectural site combining building, landscape, and stuff. I visited various spots and documented skateboarding and its reactive relationship to the architecture of the site. Skateboarders transform ‘ordinary’ places into culturally significant spots, and in turn reveal new appreciation for those spots are already deemed extraordinary architectural sites. A plaza, a set of stairs, or a handrail becomes a landmark beyond design intention because of collective action and memory. Skateboarders know and understand these sites through time spent with them. Places gain communal value through use, history, and documentation. This research demonstrates how architecture establishes meaning not only through form, but through interaction. Interaction, like skateboarding, fosters expertise. Skateboarding teaches a way of reading and engaging with architecture that is physical, intuitive, and critical. It establishes the urban landscape as something dynamic and malleable, shaped by movement, touch, and time. Skateboarders preserve, reimagine, and archive architectural space, often extending its cultural and material lifespan through stewardship, occupation, and documentation. These actions demonstrate that architecture is not static, but alive through those who move within it. In this way, skateboarding becomes more than recreation, sport or art; it becomes a form of architectural thinking and learning. It fosters knowledge through experience, collaboration, and care. It shows that the city can be both teacher and stage, that architecture is not only designed but discovered. Skateboarding, in its everyday practice, becomes architecture’s most unorthodox but adventurous pedagogy.enTECHNOLOGY::Civil engineering and architecture::Architecture and architectural conservation and restoration::ArchitectureSkateboardingPedagogyPlaySubversionMaster Thesis