Landscape and Infrastructures: Design Issues for the Integration of Parking Areas in Non-urban Contexts

Abstract

This work represents a critical review of a selection of significant parking area projects chosen within the contemporary international context, aimed at discussing the role of parking architecture conceived as an opportunity to reinvent non-urban landscapes. Such an issue is part of the very topical broader theme of relationships between infrastructure and landscape, and of the various space and time scales on which landscape is perceived. Nowadays designers have to deal with several parking design opportunities related to the construction of intermodal stations, airports, shopping malls, industrial areas, as well as natural, cultural and leisure parks. Even if these places and design themes have now become usual, they still require an appropriate and original design research. Parking areas, besides their specific original function, can represent gardens and public spaces lying between the city and the countryside, capable of producing new hybrid landscapes blending art, nature and architecture.