Raphaël Zarka: Cycloïde Piazza

For the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, this “skateable” sculpture by French artist Raphaël Zarka (1977) has been specifically designed to be installed on the Piazza of the Centre Pompidou. Like a “skate plaza”, a kind of skate park that resembles a public square, Cycloïd Piazza represents a new place to meet in the city, an urban agora where skate culture expands to include music, looks and positions of the body.

At the intersection of culture and sport, usable by amateur or professional skaters, Cycloïd Piazza is a sculpture that is complex, open and popular at the same time, blending multiple sources of interest: skate culture and the architecture of skate parks, as well as geometric abstraction and, above all, scientific studies of movement that have long been a passion for the artist. In the 17th century, Galileo studied falling bodies by launching marbles down grooves in his models; now, the artist invites us to experiment once again with the curves of classic mechanics by way of skateboarding as both a sport and a show.