INTERIOR DESIGN Project: PARKING AVENIDA LIBERTAD (MURCIA) Author: Manuel Clavel Rojo
PROJECT MEMO
This is a five-storey car park with plenty of light between the 2.75m high storeys. Each floor covers 6100m2 and the facility’s total built surface area amounts to 30,500m2. The building is 308m long and 18m wide and the ground was dug out to a depth of 18m to accommodate the five underground levels. There are five communications hubs that link the five levels to the ground floor and there are escalators to the first and second above-ground floors. It is easy to imagine that closing a street off in the busiest part of the city to then dig a 300 metre long trench and erect 35 metre walls higher than the buildings next to them would hardly be devoid of controversy. As well as having to contend with public opinion the project was very complicated technically because of the city centre location, very high water tables that are close to the surface yet vary in level, difficult access to the site and the severely restricted available working space – essentially just the floor area of the building. To address these problems as safely and efficiently as possible we used the “cut and cover” construction system so that when the roof was put on in the first phases of the work and the deep excavations carried out there was a roof over where the materials were being stored and the access points for the vehicles delivering and transporting the materials. Prior to beginning the work and while it was under way, exhaustive geo-technical studies were carried out and the walls were constantly monitored by means of built-in sensors to check for possible warping. This meant that we were able to successfully complete the build within a period of 18 months. In the last phase of the build it was decided to pedestrianise the rooftop, restricting the traffic permanently – a solution that, this time, was fully accepted by the town’s citizens. Having resolved the technical difficulties we concentrated on giving the car park finishes of the type used in public spaces rather than industrial ones. We did not want to accept that a car park has to be dark, grey and somewhat dirty. We also thought that, just as with an airport, a visitor’s first impression of a city is sometimes the car park where they leave their car. We therefore chose materials, colours and signage carefully, trying to control these details but at the same time ensuring that these choices were also the best as regards durability and maintenance. We decided from the outset to use colour as a major element but it was with a view to the look of the walls that we decided not to actually cover them but to bathe them in colour coming from energy-saving lamps, which lends an unusual look to the place and very definitely helps users find their way around. The attendants’ booths are clad in red glass backlit from the inside. They are easy to find from anywhere on the floor in spite of the fact that the floors are very long. All the spaces that pedestrians walk through are covered with round white mosaic with black grouting, which gave us a strong, washable material that no smoke could make darker. The volumes that house the building’s utilities, pumps, electrical panelboards etc., are clustered by the exits to each floor and are painted black with exit signs painted on them, from floor to ceiling, in white, hiding all the doors, shafts and barriers that necessarily have to be there. Lastly, we used unusual graphics on black lacquered glass that humanise the space and we used the same gresite for the interiors that we used throughout the rest of the building. Echoing the black lacquered glass, the floor has been created using metallised ceramic tiles.
This is a five-storey car park with plenty of light between the 2.75m high storeys. Each floor covers 6100m2 and the facility’s total built surface area amounts to 30,500m2. The building is 308m long and 18m wide and the ground was dug out to a depth of 18m to accommodate the five underground levels. There are five communications hubs that link the five levels to the ground floor and there are escalators to the first and second above-ground floors.
It is easy to imagine that closing a street off in the busiest part of the city to then dig a 300 metre long trench and erect 35 metre walls higher than the buildings next to them would hardly be devoid of controversy. As well as having to contend with public opinion the project was very complicated technically because of the city centre location, very high water tables that are close to the surface yet vary in level, difficult access to the site and the severely restricted available working space – essentially just the floor area of the building. To address these problems as safely and efficiently as possible we used the “cut and cover” construction system so that when the roof was put on in the first phases of the work and the deep excavations carried out there was a roof over where the materials were being stored and the access points for the vehicles delivering and transporting the materials.
Prior to beginning the work and while it was under way, exhaustive geo-technical studies were carried out and the walls were constantly monitored by means of built-in sensors to check for possible warping. This meant that we were able to successfully complete the build within a period of 18 months. In the last phase of the build it was decided to pedestrianise the rooftop, restricting the traffic permanently – a solution that, this time, was fully accepted by the town’s citizens.
Having resolved the technical difficulties we concentrated on giving the car park finishes of the type used in public spaces rather than industrial ones. We did not want to accept that a car park has to be dark, grey and somewhat dirty. We also thought that, just as with an airport, a visitor’s first impression of a city is sometimes the car park where they leave their car. We therefore chose materials, colours and signage carefully, trying to control these details but at the same time ensuring that these choices were also the best as regards durability and maintenance. We decided from the outset to use colour as a major element but it was with a view to the look of the walls that we decided not to actually cover them but to bathe them in colour coming from energy-saving lamps, which lends an unusual look to the place and very definitely helps users find their way around.
The attendants’ booths are clad in red glass backlit from the inside. They are easy to find from anywhere on the floor in spite of the fact that the floors are very long. All the spaces that pedestrians walk through are covered with round white mosaic with black grouting, which gave us a strong, washable material that no smoke could make darker.
The volumes that house the building’s utilities, pumps, electrical panelboards etc., are clustered by the exits to each floor and are painted black with exit signs painted on them, from floor to ceiling, in white, hiding all the doors, shafts and barriers that necessarily have to be there.
Lastly, we used unusual graphics on black lacquered glass that humanise the space and we used the same gresite for the interiors that we used throughout the rest of the building. Echoing the black lacquered glass, the floor has been created using metallised ceramic tiles.