Architectural automobile parks, in the identical vein as bridge design, current a typology that straddles totally different worlds. City infrastructure, design statements in their very own proper, in addition to successfully storage for beloved (and invaluable) design gadgets, these ceaselessly uncared for buildings kind a part of many trendy cities. Giant by nature and generally subsequently seemingly unwieldy consequently, the automobile park serves an essential perform in city planning and our quest to create metropolis centres that may be simply navigated on foot.
In the case of their design, automobile parks may be extremely expressive buildings, with a number of Twentieth-century instances within the modernist structure historical past books to discover. The much-loved by the architectural group, however in the end demolished Welbeck Avenue automobile park and its grided façade in central London was designed by Michael Blampied and Companions in 1971. The capital’s 1969 Minories Automobile Park in Tower Bridge is one other instance, in uncooked concrete.
In the meantime, non-public case research of the style could be a treasure trove of vehicle design and an architectural show field for uncommon collections. Mini museums of fascinating samples of motoring and transport design, boutique architectural automobile parks can characterize luxurious follies within the playgrounds of these privileged sufficient to personal one. But, on the similar time, they permit for fertile floor for architectural experimentation – and right here, we survey among the best latest examples throughout the board.
Tour Sundersea Sunderland, one in all our survey’s architectural automobile parks
Architectural cark parks throughout the UK
Sundersea Sunderland by Tonkin Liu
(Picture credit score: David Valinsky Images)
A brand new state-of-the-art multistorey, architectural automobile park has simply opened in northern England, courtesy of London structure studio Tonkin Liu. Sundersea Sunderland is a crucial piece of city infrastructure for its space however goals to turn out to be a beacon of placemaking too – actually lit from inside at night time and exhibiting off its mesmerising perforated-screen façade.
It has excessive sustainable structure aspirations too; inexperienced partitions inside maintain some 50,000 crops particularly chosen to work with the native local weather and convey biodiversity to the world, whereas a rainwater harvesting system is housed on the car-free roof. Tonkin Liu collaborated on the mission with a workforce of consultants, the primary contractor Sir Robert McAlpine, automobile park system firm Goldbeck in Germany, and façade fabricator Maple in Birmingham.
Storage Deluxe by Jonathan Clark Architects
(Picture credit score: Storage Deluxe / Jonathan Clark Architects)
Storage Deluxe is a non-public enterprise from London-based studio Jonathan Clark Architects, a specialist in industrial interiors and bespoke residential design. Surmising that purchasers who’ve collected greater than a triple storage’s price of collector’s automobiles would possibly want someplace safer to maintain them, Clark and his workforce created Storage Deluxe to cater for automotive acquisitions.
The idea is straightforward: an underground automobile park that may be outfitted to the identical stage and high quality as a basement gymnasium or spa space. Constructed utilizing both a pre-cast or in-situ concrete construction, essentially the most environment friendly technique to carve out such a considerable quantity is the reduce and canopy methodology, quite than contain in depth tunnelling (though that’s all the time an choice, relying on website situations).
Preston Bus Storage by BDP (and John Puttick Associates)
(Picture credit score: Daniel Hopkinson)
Sure – this isn’t technically only a ‘automobile’ park. Nevertheless it’s a spot for cars with a carpark on prime, and certainly you’d be hard-pressed to discover a British brutalist structure icon exterior London that’s as immediately recognisable as Preston Bus Station. The mission, initially accomplished in 1969 to a design by BDP, is Grade-II listed, however was in want of a refresh; enter John Puttick Associates, who received an open competitors for its prestigious restoration work in 2015. In consequence, the concrete icon was relaunched in 2018, after its thorough facelift by the younger London-based observe.
Architectural automobile parks in the remainder of the world
Feana Park by OMA, Miami, USA
(Picture credit score: TBC)
When the Faena firm’s three-building advanced with cultural, retail and parking parts, designed by OMA, opened on 27 November 2016 in Miami, the $1.2bn greenback reinvention of the mid-Miami Seashore neighbourhood was full. Alan Faena, the Argentinean who envisioned the mission and invested ‘his coronary heart and all his power’, predicted on the time that it might engender ‘a brand new renaissance’ in Miami Seashore and past, in addition to present a vibrant new venue for interplay between North and South America.
Central to the mission, the Faena Discussion board includes two contiguous volumes, a dice and a cylinder. The Bazaar and the Faena Automobile Park are to the left, whereas throughout Collins Avenue are Foster + Companions’ Faena Home (proper) and the Faena Versailles Traditional (left).
Non-public automobile park by Morari Arquitectura, Morelia, Mexico
(Picture credit score: Cesar Belio)
On the outskirts of Morelia, a central Mexican metropolis recognized for its pink-stone colonial structure, Morari Arquitectura has designed a storage for a younger tech entrepreneur to make parking up as exhilarating as a journey on his Ducati Scrambler 900. The elongated concrete pavilion with brutalist peaks seems impressively area age however it homes a really earthbound assortment of machines.
The gathering is a private ardour mission and features a sturdy Nineteen Eighties Jeep CJ-7, a Bentley Continental GT, and a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1. And the storage, designed as a gallery area for personal viewings and the proprietor’s pleasure, combines exhibitionism with functionalism.
The Circus by Hitoshi Saruta of Cubo Design Architect, Japan
(Picture credit score: Koji Fujii / TOREAL)
The everyday circus tent construction, with its spherical form, discrete, repeating sides, and tensile nature, served as inspiration for this vacation residence in Japan‘s Chiba prefecture. Designed by architect Hitoshi Saruta of Tokyo-based studio Cubo Design Architect, the home, aptly titled The Circus, was a fee for a car-loving shopper, conceived as an area the place they’ll ‘spend time with automobiles’. Half-home, part-private automobile park, the mission is each visually dramatic and extremely purposeful.
Supply: Wallpaper
