C20 Launches Plan to Save Car Park Building: Why?
Bristol has long been recognised as one of the most exciting architectural cities. With 39 innovative developments on the way, however, there are a number of cases where the old must make way for the new.
One of the most recent cases involves the Rupert Street car park, which was built between 1959 and 1960 by the Multidek Development Group – following designs by the architect R. Jelinek-Karl.
This was the first multi storey car park to feature a continuous spiral in the UK, making it a staple of Bristol design and a showcase of the city’s innovation and pioneering efforts.
The Demolition Of Rupert Street Car Park
Earlier this year, however, plans were unveiled involving the demolition of Rupert Street car park to make way for a redevelopment. Because it is a unique, concrete structure, there is no option of a soft strip demolition to reinvigorate the space, which means the only option to redevelop would be to entirely demolish the building and start again from the ground up.
But open source data indicates that there is still a high demand for public car-parking in the city. Rupert Street car park itself amounts to nearly 10% of all car parking spaces in the Central and Broadmead areas, meaning the demolition of such a building could potentially lead to far more congestion and difficulty for citizens to park their vehicle.
In many ways, the decision might be aided by Bristol’s changing demands to vehicles in the city. As of November last year, Bristol became a clean air zone, meaning you can only drive in the city if you meet the zone’s emission standards – any vehicle that does not meet the standards must pay to use the zone.
The C20 Proposal
But for C20 – which is a charity that campaigns to protect “outstanding” buildings” – this is actually an opportunity to repurpose the car park as a dedicated storage and charging hub for electric and low-emission vehicles.
Bristol as a city is aiming to achieve 100% ultra-low-emission-vehicle coverage by 2050, but at the moment, there are only 81 charging points for electric vehicles. A success in this regard would require 6,000 to 23,000 charging points, so in defence of Rupert Street car park, it could be the perfect place to accommodate a large portion of these charging points and become, once again, one of the most innovative car park buildings in the UK.
Add to this, the environmental effect of destroying a carbon-intensive building, and the aesthetical beauty of the building itself. The plans to replace it infer that an accommodation block would be put in its place, which would entirely eradicate the design of the original building and disregard the importance of having 20th century showcase architecture right in the heart of the city.
Whatever happens, however, Bristol continues to prioritise innovation and the space of Rupert Street is going to change in one way or another. As of right now, there is a lot of support for C20’s proposal, but whether plans will change and the building will be saved is yet to be seen.
