When you think of beautifully designed buildings, there probably aren’t too many parking garages that come to mind. Parking facilities tend to look dreary when you park your car in the morning and feel scary when you come back to go home at night. They’re often drab and dirty, and if you forget exactly where you parked you could wind up wandering around for long periods of time trying to find your car (as was perhaps best portrayed in a classic “Seinfeld” episode).
Car Park One at Chesapeake Energy Corp., Oklahoma City, aims to change those negative perceptions. Designed by Elliott + Associates Architects, Oklahoma City, the 298,907-square foot (27,768-m2), 791-car parking garage features 35,000 square feet (3,252 m2) of LARGO WEAVE 2022 stainless-steel flat-bar woven mesh from W.S. Tyler, Mentor, Ohio.
The metal mesh skin has enough surface area to reflect light from the sun, giving Car Park One an ever-changing appearance. There are also aluminum outriggers coming through the mesh that cast shadows on the surface, making the façade come alive with movement.
Rand Elliott, FAIA, of Elliott + Associates Architects, said the use of metal mesh defines the structure in a different way than most parking garages.
“It really ended up being a very important selection and decision on giving the car park its personality,” Elliott said. “If you look at it at first you think, isn’t that beautiful, the way the surface reflects the sky. This is an artistic expression of what a car park facility should be.”
Elliott + Associates has worked with Chesapeake Energy for more than 20 years, and according to Elliott, the CEO of the company believes that the quality of the architecture affects his employees, the environment and society in general.
The parking garage may be a project type that is generally done very poorly with no relationship to humanity, but it should be an amenity, Elliott said.
“We set about to reinvent the parking garage experience,” he said. “We said let’s think about redefining it. Let’s think of this building as something different than a place where you would store cars. What if this would appear as an office building? We began to imagine one of the first things you would do would be to design it in such a way that you wouldn’t see the cars from the outside. We felt the opportunity was to add value to the campus.”
A variety of elements were implemented to keep this parking facility from being just a big, static object. First of all, it was renamed as a “car park” rather than calling it a garage. There are greeting signs as you leave and enter, color-coded markings to help visitors and employees remember where they parked, and an atrium in the center of the space. “It allows natural light in the center of the space,” Elliott said of the atrium. “It makes the space feel safer, you have some relationship to nature.”
Car Park One relates to nature on a daily basis, taking advantage of the 300 sun days per year in Oklahoma City, according to Elliott.
“At the end of the day, you’re actually walking toward the garage at sunset,” he said. “The exterior of the west side takes on amazing colors and variations. What a nice way to be able to finish your day.”
Car Park One, Oklahoma City
Owner: Chesapeake Energy Corp., Oklahoma City
Architect: Elliott + Associates Architects, Oklahoma City
Parking consultant: Walker Parking Consultants, Houston
General contractor: Smith & Pickel Construction, Oklahoma City
Metal mesh supplier: W.S. Tyler, Mentor, Ohio,
Aluminum outriggers: Knox George Glass Co., Oklahoma City, (405) 840-3459
Glass storefront: Kawneer, Norcross, Ga.,
