Lengfeld & Wilisch Architekten

In the context of a reform of the urban planning concept a new multi-story car park providing 468 parking spaces was built on the campus Lichtwiese of the Darmstadt Technical University. The "open car park" was designed as a combined steel/reinforced concrete construction with 16 mezzanine floors arranged according to the D'Humy split level system. The interior levels of the car park can be accessed via two-way half-ramps, with all parking spaces being well reachable by the entering search traffic. Two staircases located at the opposing front faces near the offset of the levels allow pedestrians to easily access all parking floors. The building's facade is structured like a wide-meshed net, which underlines the compact and independent character of the construction, and dominates the heterogeneous surroundings of the campus by its clear form. The checkered cladding of the facade consists of anodized aluminium sheets whose colour on the south front adopts the bronze shade of the neighbouring civil engineering building thus creating a relation to the existing building complex. With the colour shades gradually changing from bronze to aluminium reflecting the surroundings at the other side of the building, the building structure seems to almost dissolve. The individual cladding panels are fixed to slim vertical pilaster strips and slight overlappings make them seem as if threaded on a string, almost floating. As the panels are slightly pre-bended, the material could be quite thin without being in danger of irregular bulging due to temperature changes. This helped saving material and costs. The staircases are characterized by a scale-like glass facade which provides the necessary protection from the weather and, at the same time, sufficient aeration. The entrance and exit area as well as the access from the level of the civil engineering building are accentuated by stirrup-shaped aluminium-cladded canopies.