East Campus Parking Garage

An underground parking garage that helps restore a pedestrian-oriented environment to campus and is equipped for future flexibility.

Information

Location St. Louis, Missouri
Services Architecture
Project Type Transportation / Infrastructure

The Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) campus contained significant opportunities for development but was somewhat limited by St. Louis County’s mandate to provide a specific amount of parking. The new WUSTL flexible, functional, and welcoming underground parking garage, completed by BNIM and KieranTimberlake, is the connective tissue for all of the buildings on campus. To create a vibrant campus with thriving landscape and responsible development that respected the prestigious campus history, this parking garage held an important role in allowing for future growth and meeting WUSTL’s programmatic needs. It contributes greatly to visitor experience, moving cars to subterranean parking and creating a pedestrian oriented landscape for comfort, safety, and beauty above. A major green roof over the underground garage creates a dynamic, car-free park. The adaptable design incorporates higher floor-to-floor dimensions, heavier floor loads for anticipated occupancies, accommodation for connections to daylight and landscape above, and other strategies that will enhance the transformation of parking space into people spaces in the future.

Impact + Innovation

The new East Campus Parking Garage was designed within a 100-year design parameter for the University, meaning the garage was designed not only to remain structurally sound for 100 years, but it was designed to be adaptable over the next 100 years, accommodating the ebbs and flows of spatial needs in coming decades. For instance, should automobiles ever become obsolete, the university has contingency plans to convert the garage into classrooms and labs. To accommodate this vision, the team designed the garage with higher floor-to-floor heights that can be reconfigured into occupiable space if and when needed. Furthering this vision, during the design process, BNIM’s team ran concrete durability models that showed extended life through a special mixture of concrete and by utilizing construction techniques that would allow movement within the structure. By increasing the amount of pozzolans in the concrete, the team was able to increase carbon sequestration, increase the concrete strength and density, and decrease efflorescence. The design also incorporated state-of-the-art waterproofing via an underground system that identifies leeks and is designed to last 100 years.

Process

The design and execution of the new underground parking structure required extensive coordination between numerous design and construction partners. Through a series of planning and design initiatives, BNIM worked to help unravel a number of issues – complex infrastructure, a previously buried underground stream, surface parking, and constant traffic that disrupted pedestrian and bicycle safety. The most challenging infrastructure undertaking was protecting the entire campus data and communications backbone in the path of a new underground drive. The result is a more graceful and safer drive and 900 cars of parking hidden from view.

People

Team

John Collier
Craig Scranton
Joshua Harrold
Dan Johnson
Mark Neibling
Steve McDowell
James Pfeiffer
Jamie Kluesner
Jeremy Kahm
John Reeves
Rosemary Nelson
Anastasia Huggins
Daniel Siroky
Shahad Sadeg
Daniel Eddie
Dylan Rupar
Christianne Jordan
Daniel Brown

Client

Washington University

Collaborators

Kieran Timberlake

They helped us think differently about what a parking structure could be; stretching our thinking and identifying opportunities to be better than the expected. We were just thinking about parking – the BNIM team made it about ‘the possibilities for the arrival experience to the university campus.’

James Kolker, FAIA, University Architect, Associate Vice Chancellor

BNIM’s vision for the transformation of the east end of our campus starts with an underground parking garage — not a building type that often connects to nature. Not only does ours connect, it celebrates the experience of arrival, community, and sustainability, offering views, natural light, landscape, clear way finding, generous space, a green roof park, and the possibility for adaptive reuse that has become a memorable and positive campus experience. This can’t be said for many underground parking garages.

James Kolker, FAIA, University Architect, Associate Vice Chancellor

The project has enabled a significant addition of research labs, studios, an expanded art museum, welcome center and cafe — all in service of the university’s mission and values. What has surprised and delighted me is the countless visitors who have shared feedback about how great the parking is. It’s become a place of campus community, where colleagues bump into each other and first time visitors marvel at the adjacent garden court and circulation spaces that frame views of the sky.

James Kolker, FAIA, University Architect, Associate Vice Chancellor