Even as someone who has designed a few for a living, I must admit that parking buildings don’t necessarily offer much to get exited about (they can get bloody complicated though, which is when it gets interesting again – at least for an engineer). But oh, this one is different. The very scale of it alone speaks of how the world works when bicycles are part of it as matter of course.

Too many bikes around? Store them like other places store cars.

Antwerp Central Station bike parking, via Copenhagenize.Com.

IF THE EMBEDDED VIDEO DOESN’T WORK FOR YOU, GO STRAIGHT HERE TO THE VIDEO.

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2 Responses to “There’s parking buildings, and then there’s parking buildings”

1. Non-motorist (@ByTheMotorway) says:

   July 21, 2012 at 11:59 pm

   This is fantastic!

   Although it is as big as some car-park buildings, the storage density is obviously far greater. Taking Auckland’s average car occupancy rate at an optimistic 1.5, Antwerp Centraal (2000+ spaces) carries more than the Britomart Car Park building does (1250 spaces or 1875 people). So in an alternative universe of a cycling-friendly Auckland, the real estate footprint of parking could on the whole be a slim fraction of what it is now, even if a few peak parking facilities might scale up to familiar magnitudes.

   And it is a much more humane experience inside the building, without the industrial grunge, fumes or noise from combustion engines, or the incredible wear-and-tear at the mercy of speeding multi-tonne metal deadweight, and so on. The video says it all much more convincingly!
2. Boyd says:

   July 23, 2012 at 4:22 pm

   It was hard enough finding my bike at the end of the school day; the looks like a nightmare.