Stairset

Skaters count stairs. Riser, tread, width, a number of steps: the vocabulary of a building code is also how a skate spot gets its name. The Hollywood 16. El Toro's 20, torn out in 2019. The Lyon 25 — twenty-five steps outside a Renzo Piano convention centre, whose ollie went unmade from Ali Boulala's attempt in 2002 until Aaron Homoki landed it in 2015. Nowhere else does anyone count the stairs.

Once you skate, that count changes how stairs look. The run-up gets measured, the rail reads as something to grind rather than hold, the landing gets checked for cracks and camber, and every new set is graded against the ones already rolled away from. Stairset comes from that way of looking, and its pieces are a way of passing it on: an appreciation for a good set.

Stairset builds only the object. Dimensions in, geometry out, the sun placed by hand, the same render call behind the screen and the paper. What it draws is the set standing empty — before the trick, or long after the spot was capped. Someone who has never stood at the top of one with a board may just see stairs; the pieces don't ask for more.