The landscape architect specified the plantings and irrigation (Hines Irrigation) for this parking garage in Austin. Tendrilling up the wire mesh is "Butterfly' vine (Mascagnia macroptera), so named for the shape of its seedpods, and crossvine (Bignonia capreolata), a vigorous, woody vine with orange-red blooms. All water collected from the roof enters the cistern on the structure's southeast corner, which is used to irrigate the rooftop garden and site landscaping.

A parking structure for the Green Issue? Well, it's fair to say this 100-space, multi-level parking garage in Austin, Texas is atypical. The parking structure was designed for the regional office of T3, which according to Advertising Age is the largest woman-owned, independent advertising agency in the U.S. Such a firm can't exist or succeed without being creative, so it isn't going to want just a plain, mundane, functional parking facility for its employees. The site is a mile north of the Colorado River, where the winding and busy N. Lamar Boulevard and W. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard meet. Just across Lamar Boulevard is Shoal Creek and Pease District Park. A steep hillside presented a building challenge, but instead of leveling the hill the parking garage was nestled into it.

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The plant fa?????ade filters the harsh Texas sunlight and obviates the need for additional materials and finishes. Ten Eyck Landscape Architects supplied the screening pattern concepts for the garage, and Danze Blood Architects (with Cotera + Reed Architects) did the final detailing. The Western Group manufactured the Living Screen panels. There are 158 mesh screen panels, and 54 panel sizes, the widths varying from 1.5 ft. to 6 ft., and the heights from 5 ft. to 15 ft. The individual grid dimensions of the 10-gauge welded wire (hot-dipped galvanized finish) are 2 x 4 inches. The panel edges are trimmed with 16-gauge, ???(R)???AE????-inch angle flashing. The panels were mounted via ???(R)???AE???(R)?-inch thick galvanized brackets, bolted to 16-gauge side plates in the panels. The wire steel content is 90+ percent recycled and 100 percent recyclable.

"This facility achieves maximum function and architectural expression while optimizing durability and minimizing maintenance through a restrained material palette," explains Danze Blood Architects. Required setbacks from the property lines limited the garage footprint to 122 x 98 feet, requiring a continuous helix ramp with two-way traffic to coil from bottom to top of the structure. The helical structure allowed removal of material in the four exterior corners and central core, reducing the volume of concrete. Site dimensions only allowed for two 18-ft. rows of 8'6" stalls with two 24-ft. drive aisles, expediting search patterns of the 3.5 level structure.

The design team located stalls around the perimeter to optimize efficiency and car count, creating a light well in the center of structure. Vertical barrier strands encourage an elliptical circulation pattern and maintain sight lines around turns. Vehicles safely swing wide around the 12-ft. minimum interior turn radii.

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The green roof plantings are Esperanza, Texas sage and red yucca.

The architect further notes the cast-in-place structure has a combination of long-span girders and beams to create warped short span slabs with maximum floor slopes of 6.5 percent at the face of interior vertical strands, and only 3.4 percent at the back of stalls. Typical 10,900 sq. ft. floor plates provide 31 spaces per level, limiting the average area per space to a "remarkable 351.7 sq. ft. space for single loaded bays," the architect explains.

The vehicular portal is located on grade at the lowest level of the garage. Visitor parking is at the office building across the street. Employee garage access is via card-controlled gates. Drivers need only show their access card to the proximity reader, thus eliminating the need to roll down car windows, insert pass cards, or pay fees. Site topography facilitated egress to grade at each level, eliminating the need for two stairways. A single, generous wide stairway is located to limit climbs to two levels above grade, eliminating the need for an elevator in the unstaffed facility. The stairs on each level reinforce orientation to one's destination, and thus no need for special way-finding signage.

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Concrete, steel screens, and vegetation come together to give the structure some drama, with dappled sunlight and free-flowing breezes filtering through the green vines. The continuous steel screens clad the building, offering security with significantly less material volume, weight or the need for additional materials and finishes.

The parking structure not only has the greenery of climbing vines, but above the parking deck the concrete structure integrates a roof garden and rooftop water collection that goes into a cistern at the southeast corner to meet site irrigation needs: functional and aspirational. The roof garden is also an urban habitat for birds and other wildlife. Vines trained onto the screens will eventually provide living green walls, allowing the building to recede further into the hillside.

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