underSTREET Parking Tower
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- 2011
The point of departure for this alternative parking tower is to understand parking not merely as infrastructural facility, but as an opportunity for redefining the relationship between transportation and public space – as the new metropolitan is anticipating an integrated solution that could combine both.
Especially in the case of Hong Kong, with extremely high density, a network of pedestrian bridges has elevated the urban surface to a new level. Various activities, such as street bargains, performs, folk arts and crafts… flourishing along the pedestrian streets.
Under such premise, we question how a parking tower could enhance the urban experience.
Through using parallel spiraling floor plates – parking under street - the parking lots have switched from a static, dark space to a dynamic, lifted ramp that unfold along the lively urban life, with elevated view of Victoria Bay.
On lower levels, pedestrian bridges connect to the neighboring buildings. Residences and visitors from all directions can enter the public surface, on which street vendors, shopping markets, noisy bars, open-air concerts, wedding ceremonies… all manners of urban life spiraling up in the tower.
The proposed typology creates a public, complex, multi-use car park tower, which elevates the urban streets to an unprecedented new height.
It is at the same time a metaphor for the future metropolitan scenario.