EW PARK: A Timber Parking Tower That Sorts Cars by How Often They Move

The parking garage is usually the building a city tries hardest to ignore: a concrete slab stack sized for turning radii and pedestrian stairs, occupying ground that could be doing almost anything else. EW PARK, short for Electric Wood Park, refuses that anonymity. It treats parking as vertical urban shelving, a compact timber tower in which cars are filed by how often they are needed. Those used daily sit low and close at hand, while those stored long term are lifted into dense mechanized racks above.

Designed by Gabriele Filippi and recognised as an Editor's Choice entry in the Parkx competition, the proposal combines a wooden structural language with automated vehicle storage, photovoltaic energy production and modular construction. Its premise is a simple urban exchange: occupy less ground and use height more intelligently. Its real subject is the long, messy transition to electric and autonomous mobility, a period in which a parking building has to serve several kinds of car at once.

A Wooden Object Among Concrete Blocks

The low-angle view establishes the project's material argument at once. Slatted wood cladding and diagonal bracing meet the ground, so the structure reads as timber rather than as concrete wearing a timber skin. In the south-east elevation the tower rises slender and layered with louvres among pale massing models of neighbouring blocks, and the contrast is deliberate. Filippi gives dense concrete cities a distinctive timber identity, which makes the parking structure a landmark instead of a void.

The slenderness carries the planning case. Conventional parking consumes surface area for the long hours cars spend stationary. By concentrating a large number of spaces in a compact vertical volume, EW PARK suggests that land around it could be released for buildings, pedestrian areas, landscapes or civic programmes. Here sustainability is about how infrastructure consumes ground as well as how a building consumes energy.

An Open Braced Base for Cars That Still Have Drivers

The south-west elevation and the head-on frame view both centre on the open, diagonally braced base, and this is where the tower meets the present. At the lower levels, human-driven cars enter and circulate conventionally, with a ramp system serving the first floors. Filippi keeps familiar parking as part of the programme instead of assuming the driverless future has already arrived, which is a more honest position than many autonomous-vehicle proposals take.

Above the base the facade changes register. A row of round openings, horizontal louvre bands and tilted wood panels sit within a dense lattice of diagonal bracing. That lattice works as both structure and expression: it holds a tall, light timber frame stable and gives the elevation a grain that steps up the tower. The exposed frame makes the structural logic legible from the street.

Stacked by Frequency of Use

The detail section explains the building most clearly. Parked cars line stacked floors, and labels identify the wood panels and solar panels that wrap them. Higher in the tower, cars no longer need ramps, generous turning radii or pedestrian routes. Vertical shafts and lifts move vehicles between levels, and automated systems handle horizontal movement. Intermediate floors serve driverless parking and rapid vehicle replacement, where autonomous cars manoeuvre through compact spaces. The upper portions are given over to mechanized, long-term storage.

The result is a vertical hierarchy based on access frequency, the same logic a well-organised warehouse uses. Space that a conventional garage spends on circulation becomes storage instead. Photovoltaic panels make the envelope an energy producer, which suits a building that will increasingly house electric vehicles.

Louvres, Modules and a Structure That Can Change Its Mind

The aerial view shows the tower raised on its diagonal timber structure above pale neighbouring blocks, with angled wood louvres running along its side. From this height the project reads less as a garage than as a framework. Modular construction is central to the idea: if private car ownership falls and parking demand shrinks, the system is meant to adapt to future uses rather than becoming obsolete concrete.

That adaptability is the proposal's most forward-looking quality. A parking structure designed around one mode of transport tends to have a short useful life once mobility shifts. A modular timber frame with an open base and a filterable louvred skin has a better chance of being repurposed than demolished.

Why This Project Matters

EW PARK does not pretend to know exactly when cars will drive themselves. It plans for overlap, with ramps for drivers below, compact lanes for autonomous vehicles in the middle and mechanized racks at the top. Organising the section by frequency of use turns uncertainty into architecture, and that is a more useful contribution than another speculative vision of a fully automated city.

The project also asks why infrastructure should be the least considered part of the urban fabric. By building parking in timber, generating energy on its skin and designing it to be reconfigured, Filippi gives one of the city's most ordinary building types civic presence and a plausible future. The open question it leaves for designers is a good one: what would happen if the buildings we store cars in were designed to outlive the cars?

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Project credits: EW PARK Parkx (uni.xyz).