Archinect - News

Melbourne considers the future potential of high-rise parking areas as urban farms

2023-08-17T12:17:00-04:00

Urban farms and communal spaces are among the ideas for repurposing car park floors in Melbourne’s skyscrapers in the future, when it is predicted that residents will rely more on driverless and shared electric cars. The architects of Melbourne’s tallest building, Australia 108, have created designs envisioning the transformation of the building’s 10 levels of car parking into space for a vertical farm, beehives, water collection and storage, pet care, podcast studios, co-working and education.

Downtown Melbourne's potential future scenario of widely-available self-driving cars has developers rethinking millions of square feet worth of parking garages, and vertical farms are seen as a solution (along with housing, retail, and dining options). An amendment to its planning rules that would require new parking structure designs to include their retrofitting consideration has been proposed that would add an extra layer to the pedestrian-friendly ambit that mirrors policies in Oslo, Barcelona, and other global cities.

According to The Age, a 2019 City Council survey suggests an overwhelming majority (95%) of Melbourne residents support the idea of reducing vehicle traffic in Southbank by 2030.

MAD's latest project, MoLo, will serve as the gateway to Milan's burgeoning Innovation District

2022-08-03T19:20:00-04:00

Fresh off the firm’s debut public housing effort in Beijing, MAD Architects has unveiled project renders for a commercial complex at the edge of Milan’s Innovation District called MoLo (short for Mobility and Logistics Hub). According to the firm, the new hub will serve as a “monumental gateway” to the city’s burgeoning high-tech economic zone.

The design for MoLo includes a five-story car park, said to be the hub's "centerpiece." Amplifying their focus and commitment to sustainability, the complex will house 8,000 square meters (or 86,111 square feet) of photovoltaic panels atop a two-story commercial center. The team from MAD shares, "The MoLo was designed to perform as a welcoming entrance and education space for issues related to mobility in which visitors can drop off their cars to explore the district on foot and see innovative transportation technology in person."

Image render courtesy of MAD.

Continuing with their focus on nature-centered designs, as seen in the studio’s Gard...

Faulders Studio's striking facade adds rowdy patterning to Miami's Wynwood arts district

2020-02-07T13:36:00-05:00

In recent years, thanks to advances in material specification, graphic appliqué, and building technologies, large, anonymous buildings around the country have been converted into canvases for designers and artists through new experiments in facade design. Oakland-based architecture practice Faulders Studio has helped transform an 8-story building, designed by Wolfber Alvarez & Partners, into a striking visual beacon in Miami's artsy Wynwood district, offering one example of this new approach.

Wynwood is not only the home of Miami's arts district, but is also the area with the largest concentration of street art in the United States. With the new architectural skin Thom Faulders and his team created for this 250,000 mixed-use building, it's non-repeating pattern adds to the district's lively and creative environment.

Image © Moris Moreno. Courtesy of Goldman Properties/Faulders Studio.

Archinect's previous coverage of the project back in 2016 focused on the project's aim to integrat...

The latest trend in luxury real estate? Bespoke automated parking

2019-09-23T12:59:00-04:00

“[Parking is] sort of becoming an expected amenity for a high-end condo,” said Andrew Bradfield, a principal of Orange Management, a developer that has installed automated garages in two Brooklyn condos: Waverly Brooklyn in Clinton Hill and the Symon in Downtown Brooklyn. “To not have parking hampers marketing.”

Despite having one of the best public transportation systems in the world, New York City's developers have taken to embracing bespoke and automated parking options as luxury building amenities in recent years. The spots can cost upwards of $200,000 per stall to rent, depending on the development.

The New York Times reports that Renzo Piano Building Workshop's 565 Broome SoHo, BIG's XI residences, and Robert A.M. Stern's 70 Vestry are among many recent Manhattan condo projects that offer "hefty amounts of accessory parking."

What if parking garages could have a second life? Design firms like UltraBarrio and Gensler bet on it

2019-01-19T11:50:00-05:00

Even today, parking garages are typically underused. In the not-too-distant future, car shares, self-driving cars, increased investment in transit, or simple behavioral change could all shift the amount of parking people think they need. And the U.S. also has far more parking than necessary–in Seattle, for example, there are five parking spaces for every resident. Architects and city planners are increasingly realizing that valuable city space could be put to better use than storing cars.

Parking garages run rampant, especially in Los Angeles. According to Gensler's co-CEO Andy Cohen there are 500 million parking spaces in the United States. “Think about all that real estate, all that attention to parking, that could be revitalized and reused for the future of our cities.” Today parking garages house a vast amount of underutilized space. Over time, the need for parking garages will dwindle and parking spaces will have to find an alternative purpose. Architects and urban planners are working through ways in which these gigantic structures can be turned into useful alternatives to developing housing, office space, and other spaces of function.

The Mod © Gensler

84.51° headquarters in Cincinnati Image © Gensler

Gensler is already in the works of transforming a part of Netflix's two-floor parking garage into new office space However, this isn't Gensler's first garage transformation. In Cincinnati, the architecture firm transformed 84.51's headquarters by converting 3 floo...

The world is filled with perplexing designs, parking garages are one of them

2019-01-10T19:11:00-05:00

The infamous parking garage. These monumentally sized structures have plagued city infrastructures across the globe. As the automobile still remains the most popular choice of transportation, it's no question we have so many parking garages. Often described as monolithic and bulky many architects and developers, depending on the project, see the parking garage an unfortunate expense. However, despite the many qualms people have about these massive structures, not all parking garage's are alike.

Below are 12 of the most intriguingly designed parking structures found all over the globe. Scroll down to view each car park and their descriptions below. *Structures are listed in no particular order.

Charles Street Car Park Image © Alamy

#12 Charles Street Car Park
Location: Manchester, UK
Designed by: Allies and Morrison
Description: "The structure consists of precast concrete columns, walls and floors. The external envelope is finished in natural anodized aluminum panels, painted green on...

New report presents staggering amount of parking in US cities

2018-07-16T15:13:00-04:00

Groundbreaking research presents credible estimates of the total parking supply in several American cities, and it's not pretty. Parking spaces are everywhere, but for some reason the perception persists that there’s “not enough parking.” And so cities require parking in new buildings and lavishly subsidize parking garages, without ever measuring how much parking exists or how much it’s used.

A new report from Eric Scharnhorst at the Research Institute for Housing America, an arm of the Mortgage Bankers Association, estimates the total parking supply in five US cities. Looking at satellite imagery and tax record data, Scharnhorst tallied on-street parking, surface parking, and garage parking in New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, Des Moines, and Jackson, Wyoming. The results show staggeringly high amounts of land use dedicated to parking with low use percentages.

Obama Center parking garage proposal: community groups offer feedback after latest design revisions

2017-12-28T14:15:00-05:00

The Obama Center design team has been reworking plans for a proposed controversial garage on a portion of the historic Midway Plaisance, across the street from where the presidential complex is to be built in Jackson Park. [...] When I left off on this story in November, Tod Williams, one of the architects, said relocating the garage was under consideration, given the concerns of community groups for the historic publicly owned Midway property.

Curbed Chicago picks up the story where the Chicago Sun-Times left off and reports about some of the praise and criticism that was presented at a meeting the Obama Foundation had called on December 20 at its Hyde Park Headquarters. The hearing was led by the project's architects Tod Williams, Billie Tsien, Dina Griffin as well as the landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.

Pop-Up garage designed by Third Nature guards against flooding

2017-12-12T09:28:00-05:00

During extreme storms, it's common for city infrastructure — from roads to subways to parking garages — to flood. Architects from Danish firm Third Nature want to build garages that can cope with future storms. They designed a garage that could automatically move up and down as its water reservoir fills with and empties floodwater.

Third Nature's conceptual garage structure, Pop-Up, consists of an underground water reservoir, five parking levels, and a pedestrian space on top. Most of this 30,460-square-foot structure could exist underground on dry days. On wet days, the structure would automatically pop up using hydraulics and reduce the risk of flooding; a handy design for flood prone cities and as climate-change storms increase.

Developing flexible parking garages for a rideshare-dependent LA

2017-04-18T13:37:00-04:00

The strategy reflects a consensus among some developers and planners that California’s vaunted car culture is inevitably going to run out of gas...[Andy] Cohen, co-chief executive of Gensler, predicts car ownership will peak around 2020 and then start to decline, with more Americans relying on some form of ride-sharing than their own vehicles by 2025. That means cars gradually would disappear from home garages, curbs and parking structures, freeing up acre upon acre of real estate for new uses.

Some developers are already planning for a not-so-far-off future Los Angeles where more people primarily rely on ridesharing (including from autonomous vehicles) than driving their own car, particularly in the form of parking garages that can be redesigned for other uses like commercial spaces or live/work units.

“...despite what some believe is the inevitability of a transportation revolution, many builders are reluctant to pay for flexibility until changes in driving habits are more pronounced, said Los Angeles real estate attorney Justin Thompson of Nixon Peabody. A lot of developers may think, ‘Well, that’s going to be on the back burner for a while,’ Thompson said, ‘but the progressive developers are going to factor this in.’”

Kirksey Architecture selected to retrofit Houston's Astrodome

2016-12-23T13:14:00-05:00

Harris County commissioners have chosen Houston-based Kirksey Architecture to design a project to retrofit the Astrodome by raising its floor and installing parking spaces underneath. The $105 million project -- unveiled by county officials in September -- is the most recent attempt to secure the building's future. [...] Many feared then that the world's first multi-purpose domed stadium for sporting events would face the wrecking ball.

Houston "Eighth Wonder of the World" previously in the Archinect news:

From housing cars to housing people: the case for designing adaptable parking garages

2016-11-09T15:57:00-05:00

LMN Architects [...] wants the tower to survive 50 to 100 years. “If that’s the case, we do need to make sure—I feel we do have have the responsibility—that if the parking uses do change, we design to be able to adapt to that change,” [...] the coming transformation to a car-free-ish future. With rideshare, bikeshare, carshare, increasing transit options, and fully automated vehicles on the horizon, cities are less eager to allocate precious space for empty, parked cars.

LMN Architects' proposed Seattle tower — potentially the tallest on the West Coast — previously in the Archinect news:

Cars in the Sky: Thom Faulders of Faulders Studio talks Miami's slick parking garages and globalized design on Archinect Sessions #87

2016-11-03T14:35:00-04:00

Joining Miami's proud tradition of statement-parking projects by the likes of Herzog & de Meuron and Gehry Partners, Faulders Studio has a new garage-facade design set for Miami's formerly industrial Wynwood Arts District. Faulders joined us on the podcast to talk about the potentials of parking structures for local urbanism, the role of street art in the neighborhood, and how Miami is becoming a must-build place for globalized design.

One of the many uses of Herzog & de Meuron's parking garage, 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami ↑

Check out images of Faulders Studio's parking garage below (courtesy of Faulders Studio).

Listen to episode 87 of Archinect Sessions, "Cars in the Sky":

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Floridians may not see eye-to-eye politically, but they all agree parking garages are awesome

2016-11-01T15:02:00-04:00

Paraphrased by the Washington Post, architect Terence Riley puts Miami's parking garages at the literal forefront of local urbanism: "In a city where everyone drives, the parking garage is the foyer." After all, Riley's firm, K/R Architects, curated the design of one of the city's most flamboyant parkades: Museum Garage, in the Miami Design District, features six different firms responsible for different facades: WORKac's and J. Mayer H.'s are pictured below (the former's design is on the left, mostly in white, bending into the latter's on the right, where things get more colorful) along with Clavel Arquitectos, Nciolas Buffe, K/R Architects, and Sagmeister & Walsh.

Museum Garage is in good company. Miami has a ton of architecturally bold parking garages—1111 Lincoln Road by Herzog & de Meuron (the cover image here) cost $65 million to build and is home to a designer shop and a private penthouse for its developer. The New York Times called it "a piece of carchitecture that resembles ...

A closer look at Boston's Winthrop Square redevelopment bids

2016-06-27T14:00:00-04:00

Frustrated by a succession of boring glass boxes, Mayor Marty Walsh has called for one more: adventurous architecture. [...] the city tries to sell off a decrepit garage in Winthrop Square. Earlier this month, each of six development teams presented its ideas in an open house at Faneuil Hall. On Monday, the Boston Redevelopment Authority revealed each team’s bid for the garage.

Detailed presentations of the six final RFP responses can be found here.

A minimalist pop-up apartment for Bangkok's parking garages

2015-11-17T17:59:00-05:00

In Bangkok, where rents are quickly rising and young professionals often struggle to find places to live, architects created a simple tiny house that can easily pop up in a parking garage or inside one of the city's half-built abandoned buildings. [...] Instead of solid walls, the structure has a lattice-like design that lets breezes pass through. "With the wall, we need as much ventilation as possible," she says. "It is always too hot, not cold."

Bangkok-based firm All(zone) is currently exhibiting their "Light House" shelters at the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Flexible Parking Structures as Civic Catalysts

2014-11-24T14:55:00-05:00

First, parking structures need to be used for longer periods of the day and for different purposes, both public and private. [...] Second, parking structures need to be designed as flexible structures that can accommodate transitions from parking alone to a variety of other uses as parking ratios decline with further mixed-use development and increased use of shared parking facilities and transit.

Robot Ray Parks Your Car At The Airport

2014-11-03T13:08:00-05:00

Are you in a hurry to catch your flight and still need to find a parking place? Meet Ray, a shiny robot that parks your car at Düsseldorf Airport in Germany. Ray makes sure you don’t have to park miles away from the terminal, eliminating the hassle of finding a parking place. Just drop off your car within a few meters from the check-in area [...]. When you come back from a holiday or business trip, the robot will make sure your car is ready to go when you walk out of the airport.

Danish parking garage invites to stay and play

2014-08-07T14:18:00-04:00

A new parking garage in Nordhavn, Denmark by JAJA Architects will combine form, functionality, and fun. Draped in greenery and topped with a public playground, the aptly named Park and Play reimagines a garage as an active social space rather than simply a storage place for cars. [...] The garage is being built as part of the first phase of Nordhavn’s almost 500-acre master plan to be developed over the next 40 to 50 years.

One Woman's Quest to Design Parking Lots People Don't Hate

2014-08-05T14:15:00-04:00

This automated garage is ideal for dense urban areas, says Yoka, vice president of program development at the International Parking Institute, based in Alexandria, Virginia. A Philadelphia-area native and self-described "super parking nerd," her niche is sustainable parking, something that many people, upon first hearing the phrase, assume is a contradiction. But for a building designed to house cars, says Yoka, The Lift at Juniper Street is surprisingly green.

Enlightenment About Parking: Q&A with Architect Darius Sollohub

2014-04-29T14:30:00-04:00

We might ask ourselves the question, why is it that so many communities want to disguise the utilitarian cell phone tower as a fake tree? They fool no one and actually call more attention to them. Or why are there hundreds of parking structures that have false façades that make people initially think they are foreclosed buildings with all the windows broken? There seems to be much cultural confusion about the beauty of the utilitarian.

Willoughby Square: Park Above, Parking Below

2014-03-18T13:38:00-04:00

Willoughby Square, in Brooklyn, NY, however, will bring together both beauty and utility by topping an automated underground parking garage with street-level greenery in a smart new project targeted for completion in 2016. Over a decade in the making, Willoughby Park is being called the “crown jewel” of the 2004 Downtown Brooklyn Redevelopment Plan, a scheme to help improve Brooklyn’s public spaces and foster neighborhood community and culture.

eleven eleven, a film on H&dM's Miami parking garage

2012-12-12T14:41:00-05:00

It's known as Eleven Eleven, and it has changed people’s perception about what a utilitarian structure can be; and has ignited conversations worldwide about its design and use. This garage has reshaped the urban fabric of the city and people are going there to get married, relax, and enjoy a cocktail.

James Bond-style Pond and Parking Garage Entrance by HOSPER

2012-07-26T18:07:00-04:00

Earlier this week, we featured the urban square design GENK C-m!ne by Dutch landscape and urban design firm HOSPER. Here's another project by them we really enjoyed: an almost 8,000 square foot ornamental pond on top of an underground parking garage which rivals any James Bond supervillan lair. The fascinating garage entrance, which has won multiple design awards, is part of the larger urban and landscape master plan HOSPER drew up for the land of the historic Hageveld Estate, near Amsterdam.

Zaha Hadid Chosen to Design Miami Beach Parking Garage

2011-09-16T18:54:26-04:00

Architect Zaha Hadid has been chosen by the City of Miami Beach to design its newest parking garage at Collins Park, a neighborhood that’s home to the Miami City Ballet, the Bass Museum, the City Library as well as the Gansevoort, W and Setai luxury hotels. Collins Park is also just blocks away from the Miami Beach Convention Center, the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center and the popular automobile-free Lincoln Road Mall.

“This is a great opportunity for the City of Miami Beach to expand its commitment to leading edge architectural design”

Consistently sought-after, Hadid is the architect of the Aquatic Center for the 2012 London Olympics, the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and has designed major building structures for BMW and around the world in Barcelona, Abu Dhabi and Cardiff, Wales. Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize - the profession's highest honor - joins the growing list of world renowned architects who have gained international ...

Parking spaces

2011-07-20T01:17:04-04:00

Simon Henley's new book, The Architecture of Parking (Thames & Hudson), casts an objective eye over car parks, one of the most important but most neglected building types of the modern era, and finds a strange and haunting beauty.

'Using formal expression to overcome any shortfall in the quality of construction' ... The Tricorn Centre, Portsmouth, (above) designed by The Owen Luder Partnership.

Ground Level: One more good-looking garage in Santa Monica

2011-07-06T16:39:00-04:00

But the real show is outside, where the garage includes a number of large-scale public-art installations, including pieces by Anne Marie Karlsen (along 2nd Street) and L.A. firm Ball-Nogues Studio (along 4th Street). The Ball-Nogues piece, called “Cradle,” features hundreds of stainless-steel spheres suspended from one of the garage’s exterior walls. The design is open-ended enough to suggest both sea foam and a Newton’s Cradle...