The World's 18 Strangest Parking Garages

The World's 18 Strangest Parking Garages

By: Popular Mechanics 

Parking garages are often architectural afterthoughts. Monolithic and utilitarian, they rarely offer more than the necessary housing of cars for other more aesthetic structures. "It's an expense a developer generally doesn't like, but it is a necessary evil to make his development successful," says Len Tsupros, president of Carl Walker Construction, a design firm that specializes in parking garages. However, as cities become larger and as transportation technology changes, the role and function of the parking garage has to be redefined. Here are some of the world's most interesting, innovative and just plain bizarre parking garages.

Car Silos at the Autostadt
Location: Wolfsburg, Germany
Background:
Volkswagen's Autostadt—an automotive-themed amusement park—includes a car museum, driving courses, car-factory tours and these 20-story car silos.

Why It's Unique:
European VW buyers can opt to pick up their cars from the robotic car silo instead of the dealership—the automation ensures they will receive a car with an odometer that reads zero. After spending a day enjoying the park, customers watch the central robotic arm travel up the tower and choose their vehicle from the beehive of cars.

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Reinventing the Parking Garage

Departures.com has an interesting article on a Miami parking garage that has been reinvented and given a brand new look. You can read the entire article here.

Reinventing the Parking Garage

By: Departures.com

Zaha Hadid is the latest in a series of starchitects to design a garage in Miami Beach.

When a delegation from Miami Beach flew to Art Basel in Switzerland last June looking for architectural inspiration for new city projects, they ended up with a plan for a parking garage. But not just any garage: a floating figure eight designed by world-renowned starchitect Zaha Hadid. At the Art Basel design fair, Miami Beach mayor Matti Bower and city manager Jorge Gonzalez got a close look at some of Hadid’s recent work and were especially drawn to the public green spaces in her plans for Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park. So when the commission for a $13 million garage at Miami Beach’s Collins Park came up soon after, they asked Hadid to enter the competition. It was no surprise that she won—her stunning form-based plan and presentation is legendary—but what was shocking was that she and a roster of world-renowned international architects, from Daniel Libeskind to Robert A.M. Stern, would compete head to head to build something as quotidian as a parking structure.

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How to Make a Parking Garage Energy Efficient

RenewableEnergyWorld.com has an article about the how to make a parking garage energy efficient. You can read the entire article here.

How to Make a Parking Garage Energy Efficient
By Heather Lammers, NREL





WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It's no secret that researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) do cool things — including finding new ways to capture energy from the sun and wind. But there's nothing cooler than working on a parking garage, right?

"It doesn't sound glamorous, but it is a place for building energy savings," NREL Energy Efficiency Research Engineer Jennifer Scheib said. "A garage typically uses 15% of the energy that the building that it is designed to support uses. Many would say it's only 15% of the energy, but we'd say it's still 15% that can be improved on. For every watt you save in the building, that's $33 worth of photovoltaics you don't have to buy when you are targeting net-zero energy." A net-zero energy building produces as much energy as it uses over the course of a year.

NREL bid the parking garage and accompanying site entrance building for the lab's expanded campus using the same streamlined design-build process that was leveraged in the construction of the Research Support Facility (RSF). The team of RNL and Haselden Construction partnered with NREL to build these new energy-efficient facilities.

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Envisioning the Future of Parking

Parking Matters has a great article about the future of parking and the role parking lots play in society, from encouraging economic activity to making neighborhoods more livable, specifically in Eugene. You can read the entire article here.

Envisioning the Future: Parking’s Role
By Jeff Perty

Parking Enforcement Officer: Duties Performed

Enhances neighborhood livability and encourages economic activity.
Provides assistance and general information to a diverse population.
Works independently and exercises flexibility, dependability, good judgment, and a positive attitude.

These are the first three duties of a parking enforcement officer with the City of Eugene, Ore. They are also the priorities we want our officers to focus on. Parking enforcement is about people, not license plates. By focusing on customers, we change the perception of enforcement officers from ticket-writing vultures to city ambassadors.

This year’s IPI Conference & Expo featured a continual thread of sessions that aligned with one of our key priorities: enhance neighborhood livability and encourage economic activity. I learned about Calgary’s willingness to allow taxis in their fire hydrant zones (read more about this in the upcoming September issue of The Parking Professional), UNC Greensboro’s 12-step intervention for parkaholics, and adapting the service industry’s blueprinting tool at Arizona State University and the University of Chicago. I could name more, but there is not enough room here!

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We Do Lines Featured on CNBC.com

The article from the Huffington Post that We Do Lines was prominently featured in has also been picked up by CNBC.com! If you haven't already, be sure to read the story on how workers are coping with the high temperatures throughout the country.

Heat Wave Takes Toll On Small Businesses
By Janean Chun, Huffington Post

With the latest heat wave alone having claimed 46 lives across the country, Chris Couri, co-founder, president and CEO of We Do Lines, said their workers take precautions, including wearing reflective clothing, hats and collared shirts; drinking plenty of water; and taking breaks to sit in their trucks and blast the air conditioning. "We have to listen to our bodies and, if we feel the effects of the heat, to sit down and take care of that immediately," Couri said.

Though Couri said working in record-breaking heat means slowing down the pace and "not trying to set any world records" to finish a job, he acknowledged that the heat is actually good for business. "We have to take advantage of the weather if it's hot and dry, which are the best conditions for what we do," he said.

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We Do Lines Featured in Huffington Post

We Do Lines has been featured in the Huffington Post! The article discusses how small businesses are dealing with the heat wave, particularly how outdoor companies are coping physically and financially. Tyler Vickery, franchisee of We Do Lines in Nashville, discussed working during the hottest summer he can remember. CEO of We Do Lines, Chris Couri, discussed how his company protects employees and how the heat is actually positive for his business, as it’s the optimal time for striping. Click here to read the entire feature.

Heat Wave 2012 Taking Toll On Small Businesses, Physically And Financially

By Janean Chun

On a 100 degree workday, many people have the luxury of complaining about the heat while sitting in an air-conditioned shop or office, sipping iced coffee. Meanwhile, some small business owners and their employees are working outside all day, lightheaded, parched and drenched with sweat, without the benefit of even a little shade.

When Tyler Vickery got into his truck after working last Tuesday, the temperature read 111 degrees. The Nashville We Do Lines franchisee had just spent three to four hours pushing a line-striping machine loaded with paint across an asphalt lot. "The heat, when it comes off the asphalt, can take your breath away," Vickery said. "When I took off my hat, it was like I had put it underwater, and the same with my shirt. It was 100 percent soaked in sweat."

"I didn't feel like I was going to pass out, but several times I knew I needed to sit down right away and drink water," added Vickery, who doesn't recall another summer as hot as this one.

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Electric Car Parking Spots Being Abused

As the electric car age is now well upon us, many retail locations and offices have parking spaces saved specifically for the vehicles that don’t use gas. The spots oftentimes also have electric chargers so a customer or employee can juice up while the car is parked.

However, Jim Motavalli, a New York Times contributor and author of an article for Mother Nature Network, points out that many people aren’t exactly following the rules for these spaces. Click here to read the entire article. Click here to read the entire article.

Caught on tape! Gas cars parking in electric vehicle spots.
Since EV charging spots are near the entrance, gas cars are hogging them. What can be done about that?

By Jim Motavalli

I was surprised, during a recent visit to my local Whole Foods, to see a non-electric car parked in front of, and blocking, one of the two chargers—right near the entrance—that the environmentally minded grocer provides for its customers. And it got me thinking.

Is there some kind of enforcement to ensure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen? Meaning fines and tow-aways...or worse? With a little research, I found a raging debate about proper EV etiquette, and some fairly tough local laws. The bottom line, though, is that people should learn to respect EV parking. The gas guzzlers can park somewhere else, even if it’s further away, but the electrics are counting on plugging in.

Since the beginning of the year in California, it’s not enough just to have an electric car in an EV space—you also have to be plugged in and actively charging. Any battery electric (the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi i) or plug-in hybrid (Toyota Prius plug-in, Chevrolet Volt) may use a space, but if they’re not actively charging they can get towed.

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