How to repurpose a shuffleboard court

[Tanya Olson]

20′ long large group dining tables? Potted plants, adirondack chairs and portable fire pit for a rearrangeable outdoor gathering space? Permanent hopscotch court? Dog training obstacle course (add tube slots to keep equipment in place)? Little kids skateboarding practice (they need small flat areas)?

[Bob Luther]

what is the overall size of the concrete area?

[Roland Beinert]

What’s the context? Who would be using the space?

[Pat S. Rosend]

It is a single shuffleboard court. I think the measurements are about 10′ by 50′. Not positive. It is a challenge to think of a use for such a narrow footprint.

[Pat S. Rosend]

It is an unused court in a local park. It is not clear who the users might be. We have not had any groups express an intrest in reusing it.

[Trace One]

I absolutely loved the giant chess boards with giant chess pieces in a public park in Frankfurt I used to live close to..Chess board was on the ground, giant scale..Was very popular with the Germans, also, lots of open-air chess playing going on..Maybe not right dimensions..

How about some kind of stage-space for improv performances, ‘speakers’ corner like in London…

Permanent display space for sculpture/ christmas/seasonal stuff…

a maze..on the ground, flat, stenciled maze – kids love it, no maintenance (or minimal..)..
ok, back to work..

[Pat S. Rosend]

I like the direction of these ideas. I was thinking some sort of ground mural. A maze is a neat idea and we could make it an eagle scout project. I like the checkerboard idea too.

[Bob Luther]

paint it with “chalkboard paint” and make a horizontal chalk board for kids to create “everchanging” art

[Pat S. Rosend]

That is fun but is the chalkboard paint weatherproof? Kids use chalk to write on the ground directly w/o the paint. We could make window panes on the ground for art. That would be fun.

[Bob Luther]

since you have such a smooth surface you probible don’t need the chalkboard paint but a dark color exterior grade paint would help set the area apart for the kids to know there boundries and make the art work show better.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

Why let the shuffleboard structure drive your design? Would it make more sense to go back to the basics and explore the needs of the park? Then do an analysis of the situation on the ground to see how this area, with or without the structure of the shuffleboard, lends itself to address any of those needs and if then if the structure is beneficial for any of those.

This reminds me of people who remove an above ground pool in their back yards and spend the rest of their lives trying to live around or “re-purpose” a circle of sand instead of having their lifestyle drive the design.

Function following form is not a good thing on its own. Harnessing an existing form that meets your needs is a good thing. Sometimes there is a fine line between “harnessing” and “following” form.

[Pat S. Rosend]

Well that would be ideal of course, but we already know the needs of the park won’t be able to be met with a shuffleboard court. It was more an exercise in repurposing older park elements that went in to the site in the 1970’s and seeing if we can modernize them with little to no funding opportunity. We get a lot of requests for Eagle Scout projects, and this would be a good thing to try and see if it becomes a popular element in the park. Sometimes you don’t know until you try.

If we had a pool we would love to repurpose as a skate spot, but politics don’t allow. Politics drives every park element installed in a site and how the different sites are managed. Fact of life in a park agency.

Replanning the park is not really an available option

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

… there must be a current type of comprehensive plan whether it is a plan of physical features or of activities that are wanted to be encouraged. Use those as a guide and try to bend the site to fit those needs or bend those desired activities to fit the site. This is supposed to be what makes us better than engineers and architects, isn’t it?

[Pat S. Rosend]

The parks do have master plans, but this is outside the scope. Sometimes we just need to think small.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

There is no demographic user group to start with? There are no adjacent activities?

Thinking small does not mean you can not make observations and make conclusions based upon them, does it? You can choose to look at it as a concrete slab and try to come up with all the possible uses of a concrete slab, but that is only one aspect.

There must be things going on in that park and people using that park. Some of those things are potential conflicts for what might take place on that slab or could complement what goes on at that slab. Maybe the slab is in the way of expansion of adjacent activities.

Another huge aspect, much larger than a concrete slab, is who are the users and/or potential users that are the first that should be considered. Obviously, it is not a shuffleboard demographic, so it is clear that others ignored the demographic in the past. The choice is to follow that path by “thinking small” or using the design process that was taught to you as a landscape architect and blend people, a program, and a site no matter the scale of the individual project.

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