The Undercroft Skate Space

The Southbank Centre Undercroft in London is the birthplace of British skateboarding, located beneath Queen Elizabeth Hall and preserved as a famous open-air public art space. Designed by Norman Engleback and opened in 1967, its concrete structures were adopted by skateboarders in 1973. In 2014, after 30,000 objections defeated a Β£120 million retail redevelopment plan, a legally binding agreement secured the space's future.

London Β· from the walk β€œThe Artist's Thames” Β· audio ~4 min Β· Generated

Southbank Centre Undercroft, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

How was the Southbank Centre Undercroft in London saved from commercial redevelopment?

Listen... can you hear that? The rhythmic clatter of wheels on concrete, echoing off raw grey pillars like a pulse. Welcome to the Undercroft... London's most extraordinary open-air gallery, hiding in plain sight beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall.......... What you're standing in right now is not a skatepark... not really. It's one of the most radical experiments in public art this city has ever produced. This space is widely considered the birthplace of British skateboarding. Left open to the public when the Queen Elizabeth Hall was built in the nineteen sixties, its concrete ledges, ramps, and pillars were adopted by skateboarders in the mid nineteen seventies. Oral histories place nineteen seventy-three as the year those first pioneers... in flared trousers and on clunky boards... claimed these sloped concrete surfaces as their own.......... Now, look at those walls. They're plastered with bright artwork... some abstract, some cartoonish, some political... and All of it crackling with energy. Despite efforts to clean up the area, the columns and walls are covered in vivid designs... and they're constantly being painted over, so you are unlikely to see the same combination of images twice. As a visual artist, think about what that Means. This is a canvas that devours itself and regenerates... daily. No gallery in the world works like this.......... And the architecture itself is the first layer. It was designed by a team of radical young architects led by Norman Engleback, who created what's been described as "a thrilling hodgepodge of sprouting mushroom columns, jumbled geometries, cantilevered cubes." When it opened in nineteen sixty-seven, readers of the Daily Mail voted it "Britain's ugliest building." And yet... it was Precisely that raw, unfinished quality that drew artists in. The concrete structure, with its board-marked finishes and Cornish granite aggregate, has a texture that's almost sculptural.......... This place nearly vanished. In March twenty thirteen, the Southbank Centre unveiled a hundred and twenty million pound plan to transform this entire space into retail units. Coffee shops... where graffiti now blooms. Long Live Southbank collected over thirty thousand individual objections... making it the most unpopular planning application in UK history. Even the Mayor of London declared the Undercroft "part of the cultural fabric of London." In September twenty fourteen, a binding Section one oh six agreement was signed, guaranteeing the space's long-term future.......... And just recently... the Entire Southbank Centre complex, including this very Undercroft, was awarded Grade Two listed status! That listing came after a Thirty-Five Year battle by conservationists... their recommendations rejected Six times since nineteen ninety-one.......... So look around you... at the layered paint, the scuffed concrete, the skaters carving lines through space like living brushstrokes. As one volunteer put it... "This space has empowered generations of physical, visual and collaborative expression." Every mark here is temporary. Every moment is a composition. And that... is what makes it one of the most honest art spaces in London.

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