American Planning Association 19 18 Planning May/June 2013

From Eyesore to

Elegant and exciting? Yes, a few new parking garages are going in that direction. By Jeffrey Spivak

Once upOn a time, parking garages were architecturally ele-gant and stylish. This was way back in the first decades of the auto age. early downtown garages were designed to blend in with the office buildings around them, with facades featuring doors, windows, arches, terra cotta trim, and ornamental stonework. Their

appearance mattered because back then drivers pulled in, left their cars with a valet, then strolled outside past the building to their destina-tions.

all that changed as valets gave way to self-parking and cities had to accommodate more automobiles. garages became strictly functional and utilitarian, a building type stuck in a rut: squat, low, and rectilinear, with horizontal slabs open to the air on all sides and a facade that looked like a cold, unsmiling face. garages were sterile and desolate, prompting urban theorist Jane Ja-cobs to say, “The more downtown is broken up and interspersed with parking lots and garages, the duller and deader it becomes.”

Fast forward to the current century. some public and private developers have started demanding more attractive park-ing structures, and as a result, architecture has rediscovered the parking garage. in di-verse places ranging from miami Beach to Oklahoma city, and from the small town of columbus, indiana, to the los angeles sub-urb of santa monica, well-known architects have been designing garages with sculp-ture-like skins, cascades of colored lights, walls of green plants, even a new twist on

Above photo by Alberto Tamargo; right photo by Michael McElroy/New York Times

The snazzy parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida, includes an event space. Its developer, art collector Robert Wennett, wanted special touches such as a handmade bench (opposite). Icon

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American Planning Association 21 20 Planning May/June 2013

sign in 2007 and is an assistant architecture professor at southern illinois university. “it’s a trend that restarted with people want-ing the garage to have an identity and char-acter as part of the visitor experience. it’s really the garage to the level of art.”

The artistry of some new garages reflects an increasing interest in parking aesthetics generally.

“garage owners and developers are definitely paying more attention to the aes-thetics of facilities today,” says casey Jones, director of parking services at Boise state university in idaho and chairman of the international parking institute, an industry association that honors the best new facili-ties with annual design awards. “The well-designed, pleasing-to-look-at facility is be-coming more the norm.”

Dazzling designsThe universe of dazzling garage designs is still quite small. nationwide, just a dozen artistically acclaimed structures have been built since 2008. interestingly, about half of these projects have been done by private developers and half by city governments. Florida is in the vanguard, with miami Beach at the epicenter of this new architec-tural niche. Four new-style structures have opened there in the last three years and an-other is under development.

architect Frank gehry, as part of his new world center concert hall, added a steel-mesh garage that’s illuminated at night by multicolored leD lights. For the park@420 retail center, mexican architect enrique norten’s white concrete garage fa-cade was covered with perforated holes in Braille-looking patterns. miami-based ar-quitectonica wrapped the four-story sun-set harbour garage with silver- and gray-colored metal panels in trapezoidal shapes resembling an angled checkerboard.

swiss firm herzog & de meuron created an open-air, concrete-slab garage at 1111 lincoln road that’s become a destination because of its sculptural appearance and sight lines, with triangular vertical col-umns, horizontal slabs varying in height from eight to 34 feet, glass-walled boutiques and restaurants, and a soaring seventh floor parking level that is rented out as event space. This garage draws fashion shows, commercial shoots, concerts, celebrity par-ties, even weddings.

in the latest project, for the city’s collins park garage, london-based architect Zaha

Chicago’s Greenway Self Park Garage (top) won the 2011 International Parking Institute excellence award for architectural achievement. Bottom: Santa Monica’s Civic Center parking structure aimed at becoming the nation’s first LEED-certified garage.

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In Oklahoma City, stainless steel and translucent mesh help make Chesapeake Energy’s parking garage something special. The building covers an entire city block, but it seems less massive because of shifting colors on the facade.

the traditional wall-less, open-air form.in the process, something improbable

has happened: a few exotic garages have become community icons, attracting sight-

seers, photographers, even event planners.“There are some amazing garages out

there,” says shannon sanders mcDonald, who wrote a history of parking garage de-

American Planning Association 23 22 Planning May/June 2013

hadid—a pritzker prize winner—is plan-ning a series of circular decks stacked like pancakes, only with dissimilar shapes.

miami Beach, a series of islands with a population of 90,000 off the eastern coast of miami, has a long history of iconic design. while famous for its glitzy nightlife, the city also has 10 historic districts and one of the largest collections of art Deco buildings in the world. The city’s devotion to design even extends to sewer pumping stations, some of which incorporate sculptures and decora-tive landscaping.

“we’re fortunate to have that heritage of taking our liabilities and turning them into assets,” says william cary, miami Beach’s assistant planning director. “every parking garage is custom designed, so they become a valuable part of our urban fabric rather than an egregious addition.”

Green, gold, and silverimaginative garage designs are popping up in some unexpected places, too.

in columbus, indiana, the city’s new four-story garage for a corporate headquar-ters features two sides with “green walls”—vine planters that will grow ivy over the fa-cade, replicating miami Beach’s first exotic parking structure, the Ballet Valet, which was completed in 1996 and is known as the

“chia pet” because it’s covered in greenery.in santa monica, california, the civic

center garage has vertical colored glass slats in blue, green, and red that are lit at night, providing a mosaic of colors. in Okla-homa city, elliott + associates architects wrapped chesapeake energy’s four-story garage in a stainless steel translucent mesh skin that turns alternately gold, purple, yel-low, and blue based on the angle of the sun during the day. it won a 2010 international parking institute design award.

elsewhere, Jonathan park architects draped sarasota, Florida’s palm avenue garage in perforated aluminum sheets that bow outward at different angles, resembling the curvaceous wind-filled sails of a ship. chicago’s hOk-designed greenway self park is eco-friendly, incorporating cork-screw-shaped wind turbines in one exterior corner that rise more than 11 stories and power the outside lights.

and in san Francisco, the exterior of the mission Bay medical center garage is adorned with vertical aluminum slats that are turned at different angles, producing a monochromatic quilt of earth tones in light and dark horizontal patterns.

Higher costsDoing these types of projects takes a spe-

cial commitment, because high-concept structures cost more. For garages, the me-dian construction cost per parking space was $16,000 in 2010, according to the in-ternational parking institute, but some of the dazzling and imaginative facilities in recent years have cost more than $30,000 per space. miami Beach’s planned collins park garage currently has an $18.5 million budget for 489 spaces, or more than $37,000 per space.

real estate developers and the city government in miami Beach can be more cutting-edge because they can charge more for parking, especially at modish structures. The garage at 1111 lincoln road charges $4 an hour, four times the rate of most city-owned garages in miami Beach. But in most other cities building an exotic garage usu-ally takes an owner who wants one and is willing to pay.

in Oklahoma city, chesapeake energy wanted a building that was unrecognizable as a garage. in columbus, indiana—which has a population of only 44,000 but a long tradition of commissioning buildings from top architects like eero saarinen and i.m. pei—the parking garage architects initially presented the city with a plain traditional design, but city leaders demanded some-thing better looking.

likewise, in santa monica, the city’s ini-tial criterion was a straight-forward garage, but city leaders later pushed for something artistic. This garage cost $29 million, or al-most $33,000 per parking space.

“The city became really enamored with this becoming a real landmark building,” says Don marks, president of california-based international parking Design, the ar-chitect of santa monica’s garage with moore ruble yudell architects & planners. “Very rarely do we get an owner who comes to us and says, ‘i want this to be a landmark building.’ But we’re seeing a lot more own-ers who are interested in aesthetics than 20 years ago.”

New debatesparking is now sparking new debates—not whether to build it, but how to make it more attractive.

in cincinnati, a proposed city garage to serve downtown office workers and a new hotel has been delayed for years because of criticism about its design. a city planning commissioner said the initial design “looks like a jail,” and a subsequent design was

slammed for looking too much like neighboring buildings.

in knoxville, tennessee, a partnership of government agen-cies is developing a new six- or seven-story garage to aid down-town revitalization efforts, and some downtown boosters have pleaded for a facility with retail or other uses, so it doesn’t become an “unused canyon,” in the words of one booster.

“most people want some-thing that’s attractive and doesn’t just look like a concrete parking garage,” says christi Branscom, knoxville’s public works director, who oversees planning and zoning opera-tions. “There’s continued inter-est in not having a dead zone downtown. The community is engaged, and they want this to be as unique and interesting and alive as possible.”

parking garage architects say a few fac-tors are leading to better garage designs.

For one thing, more garages are incor-porating mixed uses, by adding stores and restaurants, and developers don’t want customers’ first impressions to be of some ugly, generic facade. For another thing, some city planning departments and some institutions such as universities have been creating design standards for buildings, including garages, within special districts. miami Beach’s zoning code requires new garages facing a street or waterway to have commercial or residential space on the first floor, thus ensuring that garages are part of a mixed use development.

“all this is forcing better buildings and higher concept designs,” says steve rebora, president of Desman associates, a national architecture and planning firm specializing in parking. “you can’t come in with a vanilla design anymore.” n

Jeffrey Spivak is a senior research analyst at HNTB Corporation, a Kansas City, Missouri-based architecture and engineering firm. He also is a freelance writer who specializes in planning, design, and real estate development issues.

R e s o u R c e s

The Parking Garage: Design and Evolution of a Modern Urban Form, Shannon Sanders McDonald, (Urban Land Institute, 2007); International Parking Institute, which holds annual design contests and publishes The Parking Professional magazine: www.parking.org; Miami Beach’s 1111 Lincoln Road event-destination garage: www.1111lincolnroad.com; A 2010 National Building Museum exhibition on the history of parking garages: www.nbm.org/exhibitions-collections/exhibitions /house-of-cars.html; According to the International Parking Institute’s 2011 “Emerging Trends in Parking” report, an increasing demand for green and sustainable parking solutions is a leading industry trend. Today’s parking garages may be built with local and recycled materials and include solar or wind power sources, biofuels, and hydrogen fuel cells. www.parking.org/knowledge-center/sustainability.aspx.

MoRE

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory parking structure in Golden, Colorado, has won a 2013 International Parking Institute excellence award.

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Two views of Miami Beach’s planned Collins Park garage, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects.