Mixed-use car parks have more fun
With a bit of imagination and ambition, mixed use typologies can disrupt the market and contribute a genuine community dividend.
There's only so much usable space on any given site. Historically, this has forced us to choose between what we want and what we need. Should it be a waste incinerator, or a public ski slope? A luxury car showroom, or a cooking school? A car park, or a wedding venue? While these questions may be asked in jest (and because they make for a snappy opening line), these seemingly unrelated pairings represent just a few of the newer mixed use typologies emerging in recent times. Thanks to this "Why not both?" approach to planning and design, no longer do these paralysing decisions need to plague the human race. What a time to be alive.
Nothing is just one thing anymore
In Copenhagen, BIG Architects simultaneously solved the problems of Denmark being too flat and waste incinerators being too boring, by way of their newly completed Amager Bakke Waste-To-Energy Plant. Challenging preconceptions about what a power plant is and could be, the incinerator features a 31,000-square-metre ski slope on its roof - turning an otherwise deactivating piece of infrastructure into a one-of-a-kind community destination.
Car showrooms take up a lot of space, are often on prime inner-city sites and are only used during business hours. On top of that, car ownership is declining among younger generations and inner-city property prices aren't coming down any time soon, so showrooms can no longer afford to just beshowrooms. Cottee Parker’s Mercedes Benz Autohaus in Brisbane embraces this challenge by creating a show-stopping landmark and a place that the public can actually enjoy, independent of your interest in fancy cars. A beautiful building on a waterfront location, it features a dining precinct, an automotive museum, a staff training centre, a cooking school, a rooftop restaurant, a function area, as well as a garden pavilion - all under one roof.
Think before you mix
Mixed use typologies are already going shall we say, interesting places. Answering a question that nobody asked, the Mercure Hotel has decided it can best serve the East Melbourne market by straddling a Bunnings Warehouse - because what holiday is complete without a snag and Passiona combo? On top of providing convenient access to all your home improvement needs, this luxury 183-room hotel will come complete with a restaurant, rooftop pool and fitness centre. Sometimes you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.
Mix to disrupt; mix to give back
These are the latest manifestations of a broader trend. More and more, buildings and infrastructure are working harder to accommodate a broader range of functions, with flexibility embedded into their design to diversify revenue streams, activate the public realm and give back to the community. They show how with a bit of imagination and ambition, mixed use building typologies can disrupt the market and contribute a genuine community dividend.
Car parks desperately need a mixed-use makeover
Every CBD, every shopping centre, every hospital campus, every university, hell - every place worth going has one thing in common: hundreds, if not thousands of lifeless, boring, soul-destroying car parks. Worse still, car parks are often empty for huge chunks of the day. For car-dominated cultures like Australia, it's a necessary evil, but have you ever asked yourself - could car parking maybe be a bit less evil?
A car park fit for a wedding
In Miami, Herzog De Meuron dismantled this preconception by designing a car park that is so beautiful, people actually get married in it. With its gorgeous, angular exposed concrete structure, double and triple-height ceilings, expansive views and a range of flexible spaces (including a rooftop garden), this truly mixed-use powerhouse is able to host everything from weddings, to corporate functions to yoga classes to fashion shows. If all of that wasn't enough for you, the ground plane is fully-activated with several retail tenancies.
Killing two problems with one car park
Konditaget Lüders is an award-winning playground in Copenhagen that also happens to be atop a car park. With the surrounding master plan being developed on a former industrial harbour area, basement car parking was not an option to make medium-scale residential development stack up financially. The developers solved this problem through delivering a centralised precinct car park that not only meets parking demand, but is also a beautiful building that gives back to the community.
What does your car park say about you?
Not to be outdone by the Danes, the Swedes took the idea of cultural response to the next level, by designing a parking garage that looks like a sauna and moonlights as a sledding slope. During the brief period of arctic relief that the Swedes call "Summertime", it serves as a popular meeting place with lush greenery and flowers planted on the hill.
What would this look like in sayyy... Brisbane?
Here at Hassell Studio Brisbane, we absolutely love the contextual responsiveness shown in these typologies. So we asked ourselves - what would a mixed use, community-integrated car park look like in our lush, sweaty, subtropical home of Brisbane?
Introducing, the Subtropical, Community-Integrated Car Park
Our take on this concept is a car park that is beautiful, vibrant and actually useful. It utilises multiple floors to embed a range of activating uses, creating a series of unique destinations within one building. With subtropical design principles driving the concept, its recessed concrete facade, colonnaded edges and triple height ceilings unlock space for external planting, allow for natural ventilation and protects the interior from the harsh Queensland sun. Oh - and it also has 800 parking bays.
A communal dining destination
Large parking garages don’t have to be a lifeless dead zone in our cities. Our concept features a fully-activated ground plane, complete with a double-decker hawker market and food hall. Like the hawker markets of Singapore, it’s a generously-sized, indoor/outdoor communal food hall that celebrates the diversity of our cuisine and is a testing ground for independent food vendors and microentrepreneurs.
A flexible events and functions space
Commercial car parks are generally only used during the day, so why not use them for something else at night? Borrowing rather shamelessly from the Miami example, the fifth storey of our concept features triple-height ceilings, expansive views and an easily-programmable, cross-ventilated floorplate, embedding the flexibility and amenity to accommodate all types of events. The floorplate is configured to diversify the range of potential uses, with a dedicated internal function room and a mezzanine-level bar.
A community heart and lifestyle destination
Don't stop reading now; the best is yet to come. The rooftop area is the car park's gift to the community and is a lifestyle and leisure destination in its own right. It features community gardens, public BBQs with undercover seating pavilions, a flexible event space for live music and community gathering, lush subtropical planting, water elements and a children's play area, complete with a 10-storey slide back down to the hawker market. Some might say it's a bit silly, but to that we say - take it easy, it's just a diagram.
Round-the-clock external access
It’s important to keep the nice bits separate from the ugly bits (car parks), to keep the end-to-end experience of using the building as beautiful as possible. That’s why we made the events floor and rooftop publicly-accessible via an external staircase and lift, allowing the public to access the nice bits, without having to walk through a car park. You're welcome.
Concept and Article by The Emergent City + Illustrations by Kirsten Harrison