Game Maps: Parkour Vision and Urban Relations

Abstract

Mathew Lamb describes the act of Parkour as the ‘dialectical relationship between the built form and the body. This “art of displacement” functions as a way of understanding and locating the self within urban architectural space’ (Lamb 2008, 2). Lamb’s approach to looking at the ‘corporeal connection with architecture’ (Lamb 2008, 2) focuses on one half of the pursuit of Parkour, the perceivable output. Yet, without the imagination or vision that Parkour requires, it becomes just physical exercise performed against walls; that is, as a form of outdoor gymnastics. Parkour is not merely about jumping over walls, despite some common misconceptions, it is an imaginative reworking of the existing spatial configurations as well as a reworking of the corporeal and a questioning of the self. It is the combination of these elements that creates and allows for Parkour to emerge as a performance of the everyday.