M INYUE GE

The intricacy that composes the structural body, or skeleton, of architectural forms is generally concealed beneath its skin or within the confines of walls. As the bones grow, perhaps the necessity for skin coverage recedes proportionally. In designing a skateboard, we sought to play upon this tension between internal structure and external form. What happens when the boundary between bones and skin becomes interwoven such that one becomes indiscernible from the other? We studied Herzog & de Meuron’s Beijing National ‘Bird’s Nest’ Stadium as a precedent to see how the reveal between structure and skin can operate over a large architectural form, the skeletal structure becoming the formal body itself.

Utilizing birch plywood with an internal american walnut ply core, we layered over-woven strips upon one another to establish a structural rigidity and spatial coverage that would allow the strips to operate as the skateboard surface itself. The final design offers a reveal to the ground underneath as one skates upon its undulated form, placing oneself on a vehicle that brings as minimal a surface area as is necessary to perform.