Podium Car Parking That Doesn't Suck

The apartment boom in Melbourne, and undoubtedly many other cities around the world, are frequently tossing up the same design problems. One of these issues is that it's not always possible to underground the whole car park required for the development. As a result, we're seeing above ground podium parking dominate the first few visible floors of new residential towers.

One solution that's a favourite of urban designers is 'sleeving', the act of putting a strip, or sleeve, of apartments in front of the car park at the street frontage, thus creating the illusion that there is no parking at all. However, in practice, this only works on large sites of the correct shape, and can be overly costly for the developer.

The second, and far more common option is simply making the podium look good anyway. This is of course entirely subjective, and arguably isn't always achieved.

ArchDaily reports on a development in China, a 28 storey mixed use building, that does a pretty good job of covering the parking podium with greenery in a sleek setting.

Read the full story and see some pics here.

Have you seen other places where parking has been well hidden?