Leave it to Miami to build the world’s most extravagant parking garage. Located in Miami Beach, the uber-garage at 1111 Lincoln Road boasts seven stories of open-air floors, an all-glass rooftop restaurant, and a soon-to-be-completed penthouse residence. Bloomberg reports:
This $65 million bravura composition of intersecting planes and angular piers, called 1111 Lincoln Road, does indeed park 300 cars in its mostly wall-free structure. It includes fashion retailers and residences.
The different levels rhythmically jut forward and recede a bit. The floor heights range from the parking standard of about 7 feet to as high as 34 feet. The tall floors are best for parties….
The architectural allure and the view are why the garage is in demand for weddings and other fetes. Developer Robert Wennett, president of Urban Investment Advisors LLC, cooked up an idiosyncratic commercial formula: Architecturally spectacular parking structure attracts high-end retail, which helps sell a penthouse residence and attract events.
While you might induce an eye-roll or two with the idea of super-luxe parking, the Lincoln Road garage does present an interesting idea: Take a necessary structure that is generally the biggest eyesore on a block, and turn it into an architectural statement that visually enhances the area and subsequently attracts the upscale patrons and businesses that make a community successful. Parking-as-art, if you will. Granted, we’re still shocked they haven’t already done this in Dubai. [SButtonZ button="digg"]
Tags: conspicuous excess, Miami, ostentation
That parking garage does anything but ‘enhance’ the area. Lincoln Road is a great pedestrian mall with mostly two to three-story Art Deco buildings lining either side, except for 2 hideous bank building located at either end, and then you have this concrete monstrosity. I guess any structure adjacent to a 10-story 1970s concrete bank building would look ‘sexy’.
Here’s a better idea: Take a necessary structure that is generally the biggest eyesore on a block, and hide it from plain view. See Miami 21, it requires parking garages to be concealed by ‘liners’, meaning other uses such as residential or commercial.
I notice the concept drawing obscures any cars parked in the garage. Perhaps they really will be obscured, but I suspect the drawing sugarcoats the unavoidable ugliness of parked cars.