Dan Graham: Skateboard Pavilion, 1989

Skateboard Pavilion, consisting of a large, concave cement dish for skateboarding and a canopy made of two-way mirror glass in the form of a four-sided pyramid, truncated at the top so that it is open, was first proposed in 1993 as a “stopping point” for the International Garden Year in Stuttgart, Germany. It was not accepted, perhaps because the notion of a recreational attraction intended primarily for teenagers was not thought to be a good idea.

It works optimally when the skateboarder approaches the lip or edge of the concave dish and looks up toward the sky/canopy and sees a combined kaleidoscopic reflection and transparent image of himself and the surrounding environment on the canopy form. The cutaway top produces a diamond-like image also projected on the two-way mirror canopy.

The truncated two-way mirror pyramidal canopy alludes to the 19th-century wrought-iron canopy of the park music gazebo and, simultaneously, to the 1980s “Neoclassical” pyramid roof culminations on corporate office towers.

The experience also relates to amusement park mirror “fun houses” and, in general, to kaleidoscopes with their diamond-like patterns. The skateboarders see themselves reflected in the canopy against a kaleidoscopic pattern of themselves floating weightless merging with the sky.