imagine a new parking lot

Image courtesy of Neville Mars, Director of MARS Architects in The Netherlands

The typical parking lot in the U.S. is a car's babysitter by day and a desert by night. While architects spend endless hours to perfect building designs, the parking lots are more than likely designed only to meet code and engineering requirements. While new parking lot materials such as pervious pavement that allow contaminants to filter rather than to runoff into our living spaces are now available, the trends in parking lot designs as they fit into our urban landscapes are, well, most often disappointing.


A new book entitled ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking by Aran Ben-Joseph, professor of urban design and landscape architecture at MIT has recently been published. While he has enlightened a younger population of designers, much of his commentary is well supported by critics' works that have been published within the past two decades.

In particular, Lewis Mumford stated, "The right to have access to every building in the city by private motor car in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is the right to destroy the city." So indeed motor cars continue to be a "problem" everywhere from destroying the city's urban fabric, to polluting the environment both directly and indirectly (by eliminating the need for mass transit), and by creating the insatiable need for the ever ugly, and ever necessary parking lot.

Many are finding solar panel canopies as a popular solution to the parking lot. Renzo Piano views the parking lot as the building's first impression. Therefore, his parking lot at the Fiat Lingotto Factory in Turin is a beautiful display of shaded trees. Most endearing, however, is the suggestion for Shakespeare in the Parking Lot performances. Next time you drive into a parking lot, put on your thinking cap.

Look for a full article in the AIA Ohio Architypes Newsletter Spring 2012