When in Bogota recently for a client meeting, Cristina Lynn came across a very interesting woman dubbed “Madame Parking” by a Spanish design magazine. Teresa Sapey is an architect and designer based in Madrid, Spain. Amongst a wide range of beautiful and innovative public and private works (including this stunning video of Madrid’s Christmas Lights in 2010), she also specialises in the execution of some breathtaking projects in car parks.
Her foray into this unusual “space” started with the car park at the Hotel Puerta America in Madrid. Word has it that all the components of this project, which included architects of such renown as Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster had been allocated. There were no corridors, lifts, even the swimming pool had been taken care of. Teresa was told that if she could find any area that was still “available” she could design it and it happened that the car park was the only part of the development that nobody else had thought of! We are used to the fact that car parks are often “out of sight, out of mind” and therefore it is so exciting and stimulating that they can be brought into the development in such a strong and visual manner. Check out some of the photos below:
It seems Madonna hired out the car park for a private party!
Teresa has since worked on other car park projects and her latest work was designing the entrances to the Underground Parking, situated on the main street of Serrano Street, Madrid. View more photos from the Serrano Street project here.
It is really inspiring to see such work being undertaken, and when we put these projects together with others such as the 1111 Lincoln Miami car park recently featured in our blog, we conclude that there is hope yet that car parks will gradually get the attention they deserve as the front door to many developments.
We received a booklet of Teresa’s work within car parks, and recommend you look through this in full. You can view the PDF at this link.