Planning a wedding? Perhaps you should consider holding it in a parking garage.
According to Planning, a publication of the American Planning Association, “architecture has rediscovered the parking garage.” “From Miami Beach to Oklahoma City, and from…Columbus, Indiana to…Santa Monica, well-known architects have been designing garages with sculpture-like skins, cascades of colored lights, [and] walls of green plants…A few exotic garages have become community icons, attracting sightseers, photographers, even event planners.”
The article states that a dozen critically acclaimed garages have been built in the past five years, about half by private developers and half by city governments.
Those built recently in Miami Beach include a steel-mesh structure illuminated by multicolored LED lights; a white concrete structure perforated with holes in “Braille-looking patterns;” and one with triangular vertical columns, horizontal slabs ranging from eight to 34 feet, and glass walled boutiques, that rents out its seventh floor parking level as an “event space.”
The glitzy garages aren’t cheap to build. “Some of the dazzling and imaginative facilities in recent years have cost more than $30,000 per space” the article states. By comparison, in 2010, the median construction cost per parking space was $16,000.
