PARKING DECK EXPANSION & DATA CENTER
(Park Place North)

Efficiency in structure and space are essential for a cost-effective parking deck.  Owners generally consider such buildings commodities.  A good architectural solution addresses these concerns and finds a way to meaningfully engage the urban fabric and its inhabitants.  

Children’s Health System asked Giattina Aycock Architecture Studio to design an 800-car parking deck addition with a data center on top.  Through a series of studies, the design team convinced the client to invert the concept.  By utilizing the adjacent deck’s entry and ramps, the large parking volume of the addition was pushed up and away from the street, exposing the data center in a two-story bar of clear glass at the street front. Because of the massing limitations of a deck, the designers looked to materiality to further the building’s layering, to define the masses and their functions and to create a textural richness for the city.    

The design team worked to invent a cost-effective veil to neutralize the view of parked cars at upper levels while still expressing the structure and its utilitarian functions.  After many digital and full-scale mockups, the architects developed a regular 5’x5’ panel module of perforated, polished stainless steel.  Each panel is anchored to a vertical galvanized mullion with four pegs.  Each peg varies in length and, when tightened with a bolt, creates a uniform deformation in each panel that attracts and reflects light.  The perforations make the panel virtually invisible from the inside and opaque from the outside in daylight.  At night, the condition is reversed as interior lights glow through the perforations.

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