What do we do with parking garages?
Architects can sometimes have a skewed view on what the future of a building looks like. Yes, we design with thoughts of 5, 10, even 50 years in the future, but we don’t know what that will look like. We can guess and be pretty accurate with some things, or be completely off. As architects, we should plan for the future of our building to be easily adaptable to a realm of possibilities in the future. One example I have heard recently is parking garages. With the future of automobiles in question, what can architects do with the design of a parking garage? They are necessary now, but may not be in the future. So how difficult and wasteful will it be to tear down all these massive concrete structures, especially when they’re integrated in the design of a larger building? However, when initially designing a garage, there is opportunity to think about what else that space could be used for in the future. Multiple ramps or low clearances can be challenging for adaptive reuse. Overall, architects should think about the realm of possibilities for what and how a building can be used in the future.
This is a really great question! I've seen a couple good projects where they are built to be able to convert them into stores or apartments when the parking is no longer needed. Because I think you're absolutely right, eventually there will not be the kind of need for parking that there is now, but it is not soon enough that we can simply not have any parking in current projects.
ReplyDeleteI think this is very interesting because I can't remember who told me this, either someone from the City of Charleston or an architect (from Charleston lol) but they said that the adaptive reuse of parking garages was very difficult due exactly because of the low heights and ramping and that doing it differently from the beginning didn't work for the numbers because the amount of money that had to go into making it work for future uses would make the owner of that infrastructure or the city to have to charge more to get their investment back. Yet, I couldn't help but thinking of it as a design challenge where maybe it could work for everyone and for future potential uses with not having to put that much of front yet making it more flexible.One great example that I hope it works that way is the 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage by Herzog & de Meuron in LA. I think this is a great opportunity where if someone find the right way to either be able do adapt them correctly or build them differently from the beginning they could make a huge impact in cities.
ReplyDeleteNuclear fallout bunkers... jk, Cool post, it's extremely interesting to think what future parking garages may become... it's also interesting to think how they could do more now... in general they are considered an eyesore and particularly unengaging, but why don't we start putting awesome stuff on top of them?
ReplyDeleteAt Georgia State University, I had classes in a (former) parking garage. It was actually a really interesting spatial experience. We had no stairs in that building. The classrooms where connected by the ramps. I will say that besides the obvious tectonic challenges, one of the mains things to consider is the light. That building felt very cavernous in the middle. And most classrooms had no outside views.
ReplyDeleteUpdate: Building is scheduled for demolition. It's Kell Hall, at Georgia State is you're interested.
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