Parkade // Reimagining Urban Car Parks
Set in Whitehaven, Cumbria, my thesis responds to a townscape increasingly dominated by surface car parks, spaces that have fragmented the urban grain and deteriorated the quality of its surface fabric. These vast impermeable lots not only erode continuity but also displace civic and ecological potential, raising a wider question: can towns like Whitehaven continue to accommodate private vehicles without compromising the balance between mobility, civic life and the integrity of the urban fabric? The project emerged from an urgent need to address how these conditions suppress environmental and social value while occupying prime land within the urban core.
My proposal transforms this overlooked spatial legacy into a new kind of civic infrastructure. At the intersection of heritage, policy, and environmental design, it introduces a phased de-paving strategy that reclaims underused asphalt sites as flexible public space.
The intervention introduces a multi-storey hybrid structure, part mobility hub, part supermarket, that adapts over time to host events, workshops, and co-working spaces. By relocating parking to the town’s periphery, the scheme unlocks central voids for ecological and social regeneration. Material studies explore the tension between permanence and change, working with exposed concrete, weathering steel, and long-span slabs to support structural and programmatic flexibility.
Grounded in interscalar mapping and critical regionalism, the proposal reframes infrastructure not as static utility but as a living framework for adaptive urban futures, designed to evolve with its community, climate, and context.
