Beyond Parking: How Parking Facilities Redefine Urban Space

Although cities around the world are striving to promote more sustainable and environmentally friendly modes of transportation and encourage residents to adopt new urban mobility habits, car usage remains prevalent, occupying a significant amount of space in city centers for parking. Integrating these spaces to provide new opportunities for citizens, while making full use of their facilities for ecological, productive, or other purposes, is a challenge faced by many architects and urban planners.

Economic, social, and cultural factors influence how these spaces are programmed, including population needs and the surrounding context. Understanding the role of parking facilities within the urban fabric and the dynamics of their surrounding areas is an essential part of the design process, guiding professionals in planning and organizing these spaces to ensure user comfort and well-being.

When designing parking facilities, it is not enough to consider only technical, traffic, and functional requirements. Attention must also be given to integrating public gathering areas, recreational spaces, and other activities, as well as adapting the structure to new uses or harmonizing it with the natural topography. To minimize environmental impact, various strategies have emerged that encourage the reuse, adaptation, transformation, or revitalization of these large but far-from-obsolete urban spaces.

● Utilisation of Roofs as Public Spaces

Similar to the rooftop reuse projects led by MVRDV, recent years have seen a surge of innovative transformations of parking lot rooftops. These projects go beyond mere functional conversion - they explore new relationships between people and nature, and between urban life and ecology. From public leisure areas to educational green roofs, rooftops are emerging as some of the most promising experimental grounds in contemporary urban renewal.

In a Spanish city, one project integrates a parking facility with the surrounding orchard landscape. Responding to the site's natural topography, the design extends the layered terraces formed by river erosion. The parking structure becomes a seamless part of the terrain, while its green roof-planted with local vegetation-reconnects the urban environment with nature. A continuous garden path links the church square with the orchard edge, allowing visitors to experience the rhythm of elevation and the vitality of natural growth as they move through the site.

In Copenhagen's rapidly developing Nordhavn district, another parking structure redefines its purpose with a rooftop designed for "play." By transforming the upper deck into an open, dynamic public space, the project challenges the traditional notion of a single-purpose parking facility. Bright climbing structures, open exercise zones, and lush vertical greenery create an inviting urban landscape where residents can rest, interact, and enjoy panoramic city views-turning everyday transit into a shared social experience.

Meanwhile, in Germany's Hohenzollern region, a parking deck has been reimagined as a tranquil urban terrace. With its expansive views, minimal structure, and natural materials, the space harmoniously balances practicality and leisure. It stands as an example of how architectural design can blur the boundaries between built environments and nature.

Together, these projects reveal a new vision for urban regeneration: when rooftops are given a public dimension, they cease to be enclosed endpoints and instead become new beginnings for city life. Much like a grab overhead crane (https://www.hndfcrane.com/grab-overhead-crane/) that extends its reach across industrial space to connect and elevate, these rooftop transformations reach beyond their original function-lifting cities toward more open, connected, and sustainable futures.

● What's Happening Underneath the Town Squares And Parks?

The design of underground spaces offers rich possibilities for urban architecture. Not only can they expand functional areas where surface space is limited, but they can also integrate more subtly and harmoniously with the surrounding environment. With advancing technology and increasing pressure on urban land, more designers are exploring ways to create open and inviting public spaces below ground, gradually blurring the boundaries between surface and subterranean levels.

In Seoul, South Korea, Magok Central Plaza exemplifies a "sunken urban living room." Located at the intersection of three subway lines, the circular plaza, approximately 60 meters in diameter, connects multiple layers of passageways, seamlessly linking the ground and underground levels. The space has no fixed function, adapting flexibly to the flow of people. It serves both as a daily transit hub and as a venue for events, performances, and exhibitions. Its open layout and layered visual experiences transform the underground from a closed, hidden space into an extension of urban vitality.

In Katwijk, the Netherlands, an underground parking facility tucked beneath the dunes demonstrates a perfect blend of engineering and landscape. Designers drew inspiration from the organic forms of the natural dunes, creating gentle, flowing structures that harmonize with the terrain. Carefully positioned entrances allow natural light to pour into the subterranean space, providing rhythm and warmth throughout the day. By night, illuminated entrances act like coastal beacons, adding a human touch to the tranquil seaside environment.

In Taiwan, a sunken children's playground shows another way underground spaces can coexist with communities. The project combines a childcare center, parking, and a park, addressing multiple urban infrastructure and public life needs. After extended public consultation and negotiation, the final design integrates landscape, architecture, and transportation. Above ground lies a green space for children to play, while below ground, multi-functional areas serve the wider community-embodying the concept of a city where "above and below breathe together."

These cases demonstrate that underground spaces have long transcended the traditional idea of being merely "hidden" or "auxiliary." With sensitive spatial planning and environmental integration, they redefine the vertical dimension of cities, creating lively, functional, and flexible spaces below the surface-sometimes even accommodating industrial functions such as a 20 ton overhead crane (https://www.kscranegroup.com/posts/20-ton-overhead-crane-for-sale/) without compromising public usability.

● Reuse as a Form of Urban Renewal

Reuse has increasingly become an important strategy for urban revitalization. As urban transportation systems and lifestyles evolve, many once-bustling parking facilities have gradually lost their original functions, sometimes lying dormant in the heart of the city. Yet these "sleeping" spaces often occupy prime locations and possess robust structural conditions, making them ideal candidates for urban regeneration. Through redesign and functional transformation, they can be revitalized, injecting new energy and cultural value into the city.

In Karlsruhe, Germany, an old car parking facility next to the central train station was transformed into a modern bicycle parking hub. Previously, the area had served solely as a transportation support facility, with low utilization and a single function. With the city placing greater emphasis on sustainable mobility, the project shifted the focus from car-dominated infrastructure to greener transportation. The new facility not only provides safe and convenient parking for commuters but also symbolizes the city's progress in ecological planning and public infrastructure. This project marked a significant step toward Karlsruhe's vision of a more car-free urban environment.

In the southeast district of Amsterdam, a disused parking garage was repurposed into a vibrant food market. The "World of Flavors" project converted the once-enclosed garage into a multicultural public space, bringing together food stalls from around the world and creating a platform for social interaction. From Armenian delicacies to Indonesian cuisine, from street coffee corners to student bars, the space offers not only a feast for the senses but also a symbol of community revitalization. What was once cold concrete has now been transformed into a lively, aromatic cultural hub.

These cases demonstrate that the life of a building extends far beyond its initial function. Through creative reuse, old structures can adapt to new urban needs and respond to contemporary social changes. In this sense, reuse is more than a means of conserving resources; it is a form of cultural regeneration-a creative practice that bridges urban memory with future vision.

● Conclusion

Whether it is the reuse of rooftops, the re-creation of underground space, or the functional transformation of abandoned car parks, these cases show the diverse paths of urban space renewal. They not only respond to the real problems of land resource constraints and changes in traffic structure, but more importantly, through the intervention of design, they allow the city to regain its vitality and temperature. The regeneration of space is not only a physical reconstruction, but also a continuation of social and cultural significance - it allows the extension of urban memory and provides new imagination for future life. Reuse is gradually becoming an urban language that connects the past with the future, allowing "old space" to participate in contemporary urban narratives with a new attitude.

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