The shape of car parks to come

Architect Mark Potter loves designing new car parks and transforming existing ones. He believes that the car park is an important civic building type that can help deliver new modes of mobility and enhance towns and cities

Mark Potter

03 November 2018

Ruskin Square: Ruskin Square This is part of a wider development by Stanhope that shows the restoration of car park structures can create decent public realm and landscape that embeds the building type in the city. Car parks can be useful, clean, safe places, places that people want to be, which it certainly was not before.

Mark Potter: Car parks have emerged as extremely important urban landscape object. They are a key part of the streetscape. Car parks can become beacons of sustainability: clean, multi-use spaces where you feel comfortable. They have to be: car parks have to compete with railway stations and other mobility centres in our cities. Car parks can be active enablers of urban regeneration.

Landowners, developers, car park operators and constructors have to make investment decisions and we have to make practical decisions. They are asking what is happening right now and what does the future hold? There is currently a lot of uncertainty in the sector, but there are three main trends that I see having a profound effect on car park design. Firstly, how we use cars is changing. We’re seeing far more car-pooling going on and car ownership falling. Secondly, the car industry...