Adaptive Reuse of Parking Structures – AI Visualization & Design Ideas

AcanthusAlchemist — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 04:55:21 +0000

The Future of Garages: Adaptive Reuse

Parking structures… the things they paved paradise with. These hulking concrete giants dominate suburban landscapes, their cavernous interiors echoing with the lonely hum of idling engines. These usually uninspiring pieces of infrastructure were once critical for feeding society’s insatiable hunger for car space. But times are changing and adaptive reuse architects are now faced with an intriguing challenge: What can we do to repurpose parking structures when they become obsolete?

As cities rediscover public transit and walkable environments, while innovating with ride-sharing and eventually autonomous vehicles that don’t need to spend 90% of their existence sitting in parking spots taking up space, these concrete leviathans will eventually stand largely unused as monuments to a bygone era. Yet, demolition isn’t the only answer. Could these inhuman structures be the seeds for a new human-centric urban environment? Let’s find out by exploring how the design challenges of parking structure adaptive reuse and learning how architects and their AI tools can help us design a parking structure retrofit for the modern era.

Converting Cars to Creature Comforts

Real estate agents estimate that within the next 10 years approximately 90% of new real estate development will involve some manner of adaptive reuse [1], largely due to the lower carbon emissions adaptive reuse causes compared to new construction. All that concrete in our parking structures required an enormous amount of embodied carbon to construct. Thus, tearing down these structures to build something new carries of large carbon footprint, so adaptive reuse of parking structures would need to be assessed relative to the benefits of starting from scratch.

If we were to go down the path of adaptive reuse, the obvious first thought would be to turn them into housing, killing two birds with one stone by also addressing the housing crisis. However, transforming a parking garage into a vibrant living space presents a unique set of design hurdles. Here are some of the biggest challenges architects face and the role AI might play in facing them.

Key Adaptive Reuse Challenges

One of the biggest hurdles in parking structure adaptive reuse is their low ceiling height. Traditionally designed for cars, not people, garages often have ceilings that feel cramped and uninviting. How do we solve this? There are a few approaches to consider, which AI image generators can help us visualize:

Loft Living and Strategic Mezzanines: A designer could strategically cutaway a portion of every other slab to create mezzanines, lofts, and vertical living spaces, while leaving other portions untouched for a cozier feel. These can house bedrooms or offices in the lofty spaces, or cozy nooks and creative storage spaces where the ceiling height is left low. The original loft apartments were all converted factories, so why not do the same here? The difference in ceiling heights can be perfect for urban dwellers who crave a bit of separation between their living areas where they want airy spaciousness and sleeping areas where they want more of a cozy secluded atmosphere, and the mezzanine levels create a sense of elevation change and excitement.

An Elevated Experience: Is the ceiling still too low? Are you struggling to fit the utilities, soundproofing, and finishes into the limited spaces you have? Why not take out every other floor altogether then and offer people soaring ceiling heights throughout? The goal of adaptive reuse is to preserve the most important parts of the structure and from an embodied carbon perspective, sacrificing a few floors may still be preferable to tearing down the whole structure and having to build a new one. Plus, when tenants come in expecting 7 or 8 ft ceilings and get 14 or 15, this once hum-drum structure suddenly goes from mundane to luxurious.

Stacking The Deck: Some newer structures come with built-in verticality due to the high ceilings and deep pits needed to house mechanical car stackers. These structures are inherently adaptable into other uses. The high ceilings can become offices or retail, while the pits may house spas and conversation pits or support future people elevators to service the floors above. [2]

Adaptive Reuse Ideas for Ramps

Another design challenge is the presence of drive ramps. Park-on ramps are generally sloped at 5-6%, but many structures have short sections of even steeper ramps as well. These steeply sloped slabs may appear useless in living spaces. However, when you consider what they could be and visualize it using AI, the design possibilities greatly expand:

Circulation Spaces: Incorporate the ramps as part of the circulation plan. Many are already ADA compliant and even the steeper ones or spiral ramps offer a compact and intriguing alternative to stairs for occupants to access different floors.

Pre-Sloped Green Roofs and Terraces: By code in the US, roof areas typically require the roof membrane to have a slope of at least 2%, and sometimes much more depending on the roofing material. Decking, planter boxes, and pedestal paver systems are typically used to produce a level or terraced walking surface over the sloped protected roof membrane below on most occupied roofs. Knowing this, why not keep your ramps outside the building as an exterior roof garden? They will automatically provide the perfect sloped surface for a waterproofing layer and can provide an exciting way of adding verticality to your terrace landscaping.

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Structural Challenges of Parking Garage Adaptive Reuse

Another challenge is structural integrity. Parking structures are designed to handle the weight of vehicles, not people. Converting them requires analyzing load capacity and potentially adding or strengthening structural elements. According to parking specialist firm, Watry Design, counterintuitively structural loads imposed by residential human use are nearly twice what is required to house cars [3].

How is this possible? Well despite the seemingly higher weight of cars, the average apartment has partition walls, fixtures, furniture, finishes, and just generally a lot more stuff in it that a bare concrete garage, with its nice empty drive aisles and ample turning space.

Whether the solution is more columns and shear walls, strengthening the slabs, or a mix of structural solutions, careful analysis and optimization will be required to find the best structural solution.

Retrofitting Short Span vs Long Span Garages

Another structural consideration is the existing column layout. Parking structures can generally be categorized as short span systems or long span systems [3]. Short span is the type with columns closely spaced between every few parking spots. While they feel cramped as a driver, they generally have no large ceiling beams, allowing for higher ceilings, stiffer floors to take the increased residential loads, and a column layout that fits with an apartment wall layout.

Long span systems generally use massive precast beams to provide wide drive aisles with few columns for drivers to contend with. However, these beams would be in the way of MEP systems in an apartment. The longer span would be bouncier and may not be suitable for the increased loads and occupant expectations of solid feeling floor in an apartment. This makes short span systems better suited to adaptive reuse than long span.

Light and Atmosphere

Another design challenge is how to make retrofitted parking structures more inviting to humans by bringing light, color, and style into a space, making them less gray, drab, and industrial. AI can help achieve this in a variety of ways:

Skylights and Light Wells: Don’t underestimate the power of natural light. Strategically placed skylights and light wells can bathe the interior in sunlight, enhancing the feeling of openness and reducing reliance on artificial lighting. Whether it’s a courtyard, an atrium, or just a series of skylights, AI can envision how to make this highly practical design element into a showcase feature when adapting a parking floorplate.

The Power of Color: Part of what makes parking structures so depressing is the endless drab gray of their concrete surfaces. However we can bring light into the structure through generous use of white finishes list plaster and white paint, helping to brighten up the spaces. Pops of other warms colors or using the endless concrete as your mural canvas can further turn a formerly cold and cramped atmosphere into a warm and cozy one. In other cases the addition of glass

Façade Innovation: Unique choices for your windows, exterior lighting, and façade finishes can also completely transform your building. The goal here is to do something so unique and striking that it prevents people from seeing it as a dark boring garage, and sparks curiosity to explore your creation and learn more. Take these “art nouveau brutalism” concepts below for example. With these, the AI model determines how to best integrate art nouveau detailing with a concrete parking garage and in this case settles on mosaics as they can be set directly on the concrete, unlike the framed wall claddings it might suggest for other building types.

It also shows that nearly flush windows, shallower balconies, rounded edges, and warm lighting are necessary to fill out the otherwise boxy, dark, and cavernous wall openings. These guidelines might not be immediately obvious, but iterating with AI was very helpful in revealing them. Where the AI model opted to follow these rules, it made for a much more inviting experience, and makes it looks less like… well… a garage.

Beyond Housing: A Spectrum of Urban Possibilities for Parking Structures

While residential conversion offers a compelling solution, parking structures hold potential for a variety of uses:

Vertical Farms and Urban Gardens: Repurposed parking structures can be transformed into vertical farms, providing garden space in dense urban environments. AI can help visualize the integration of hydroponic systems and LEDs with strategically placed lightwells to take advantage of natural light. Alternately it might envision a mobile urban farming platform, where racks are designed like trailers to become mobile farmer’s markets. The existing ramps could allow produce to be picked up directly like a trailer from all areas of the building, cutting down on logistics. Vertical farming is currently facing its own economic problems, but maybe they should give it one more shot with this concept, don’t you think?

Community Centers and Public Hubs: Parking structures can be redesigned to house community centers, featuring libraries, art studios, or recreational facilities like indoor climbing gyms. They can be the third space today’s society so desperately needs and AI can be used to explore open floor plans that encourage interaction and community engagement.

Real and Proposed Reuse Projects

While a lot of these may sound like AI fever dreams, the good news is parking garage conversions are already happening. In Chicago in 2023, a 1920s parking structure close to the L and Lakefront Trail was converted into a 72-unit mixed use apartment building called The Medallion [4].

There are also many proposed parking structure to housing adaptive reuse concepts out there. One by Top Floor Artistic Community in LA , is to use modular homes and landscaping on the top floors of city-owned parking structures to create communities and services for LA’s homeless population [5].

Another theoretical example was the Welbeck Street Car Park. This iconic brutalist structure was demolished around 2019 but not without inspiring numerous proposals for adaptive reuse of the structure and its astounding façade for residential or hospitality. You can learn more with an IAST (Institute for Architectural Science and Technology) case study linked here [6]:

Citing the gradual decline of younger drivers obtaining licenses and rise of public transit and ride share apps, LA-based architecture firm KTGY Architects proposed another concept for incrementally converting a parking structure to housing, so that their conversion can be phased to optimize based on demand [7].

Indeed many firms are already analyzing the possibilities for parking structure adaptive reuse, including some very insightful work by Watry Design [2][3].

AI: A Co-Pilot in Reimagining the Urban Landscape

As you may have noticed from these example images, AI image generators like Midjourney and Alpaca (Covered in a previous post) are quickly being adopted as powerful tools for architects navigating the complexities of adaptive reuse conversions. Here’s how AI is empowering the design process:

Visualizing Possibilities: Struggling to imagine how a light well would impact your design? Unsure which parking structure typologies create the most engaging floorplan? AI can generate images showcasing the interplay of light and space, helping designers optimize layouts, and can assess numerous and suggest how their form might need to change in an adaptive reuse project.

Exploring Design Options: Unsure how to integrate humanizing elements into the stark parking structure facade? AI can generate variations based on rough markups to a photo of the building, allowing architects to experiment with different materials, window designs, colors, and façade layout options to find the most visually appealing and inviting solution.

Client Communication: Communicating complex design concepts to clients can be tricky. AI-generated visuals offer a fast, clear, concise way to showcase different approaches. This fosters client engagement and helps ensure their goals remains at the forefront of the design process. AI also helps you explore unique combinations of styles to turn your otherwise utilitarian project into a striking and unique masterpiece that pushes the boundaries of what architecture could be.

The platforms architects might use for these tasks range from the creative powerhouse slot machine that is Midjourney, to the more controlled tools like Alpaca ML, and many more. It’s up to the designer to establish what the best AI image generator for their particular design task is. Not to mention, there are many AI-driven generative design plugins for more technical tasks that architects will be able to leverage as well. With the right combination of tools, architects may soon be making quick work of adaptive reuse problems such as the problem of obsolete parking structures.

Conclusion: A Brighter Future for Our Aging Infrastructure

With the rise of public transit, ride-sharing, and walkable cities, the need for parking is shrinking, offering new opportunities to repurpose these structures. While further study is needed to confirm project feasibility, AI tools can inspire fresh ways to rethink aging parking garages. Successful transformation requires not only innovative design but also collaboration among architects, engineers, planners, and communities. AI image generators can enhance this process, sparking creativity and shaping sustainable, human-centric spaces. With imagination and AI, we can transform the concrete jungle into a thriving urban oasis.

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AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

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