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08_Cordova Parkade
Santa Monica Civic Center Parking Structure
Consolidated Rental Car Facility and Parking Garage
Helios House
Mercedes-Benz of San Francisco Automotive Dealership
Nunawading Toyota
Nutwood Parking Facility at California State University Fullerton
parkit here
Rooftecture O-K
Thiais Bus Centre Administrative Building
Veranda Car Parkparkit here
Applying vision to modest materials and a tight budget, archimania energizes a humble, but ubiquitous, building type.
All airports, whether new or a hodge-podge of ad hoc additions, have the same urban condition around their edges—acres of asphalt and concrete where tens of thousands of cars occupy 9-by-18-foot boxes in an endless grid. For the most part, airport parking lots and garages do not benefit from any architectural intervention and are minimally differentiated by letters and numbers.
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Memphis International is no exception: When travelers exit the airport, they pass through a visual wasteland. The owners of parkit here have been in the car business for a couple of generations. They had hired a local firm, archimania, to design their Infiniti showroom in Memphis, so they knew firsthand the firm’s talent for renewal and reinvention on a shoestring. One would expect a showroom where luxury automobiles are to be displayed to require a certain amount of architectural finesse, but the idea of putting design effort into a parking lot at the airport might seem counterintuitive. The owners gambled that bringing good design and amenities to an industry not known for either could distinguish their company from all the others and draw business to it. They challenged archimania to figure out how to do it.
The program required in part new construction, in part adaptive reuse of a vacant and dilapidated car dealership. In order to distinguish itself from the bare-essentials offerings in the area, the client decided to add value to the business by providing unusual customer conveniences within a visitors’ center: a café, executive center, dry cleaning, and free Internet access. The program called for automotive services in an adjacent structure. Here, customers could choose from a menu of amenities—car washing, complete detailing, and oil and filter replacement.
The architects demonstrated to the client that the existing shop buildings could be reused and converted to covered parking. They then devised a two-component strategy for the new construction. The first component involved the erection of a long Kalwall partition to screen the existing buildings during the day. At night, the Kalwall expanse is dramatically backlit, acting as a beacon for parkit here’s around-the-clock operation.
Formal name of building: parkit here
Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Completion Date: 2007
Total project cost: $3.86 million
Size: 73,750 sq.ft.
Client:
JWEACE/parkit here
Architect:
archimania
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