The walls of the PAS House are curved like a skate ramp. Did skate ramps inform the design?

Usually skate ramps are just a half-pipe. If you keep the radius of a classic ramp, that would be too big of a structure as a house. The radius we used was tighter than a classic pipe. People aren’t used to skating with anything above them. Here, there’s a ceiling. It almost creates a new kind of skating.

What was your biggest challenge?

Gil is the designer and skater trying to bring the skateboard inside the design. He brought me in as an architect, for my knowledge of building houses in Los Angeles, to make that possible. My role was trying to find the middle ground. We’re not putting furniture into a skate ramp, and we’re not bringing skate elements into a house. From the beginning, it’s something designed as this hybrid structure. The challenge was finding that balance between both: being technically skateable but also being a house and livable.

How do you keep the walls from getting scuffed up? That doesn’t matter on a skate ramp, but it does in a house.

Usually on a skate ramp, you don’t put a varnish on. It makes the skating difficult because it’s a more slippery surface. In this case, we did because it’s a house. So we found a varnish to protect the wood but not be too slippery. Again, you’re in that middle ground between a house and a skate ramp, and finding something that works for both. The walls are something that you can sand and revarnish. But it’s also part of the design to have the trace of the skater and the movement.