Unparking Potential
Lara Sophie Emser
Supervisor: Univ.Prof. Günther H. Filz
ongoing
Abstract. Unparking Potential investigates how architecture can respond to the transformation of car-oriented cities and how existing parking garages can be reinterpreted as active components of sustainable urban development.
The thesis is grounded in the urgency of changing mobility patterns, climate challenges, and the spatial imbalance caused by stationary traffic. Parking structures increasingly operate below capacity while occupying valuable inner-city land. Through theoretical research on urban planning paradigms and a detailed case study in Saarbrücken, the work examines the architectural and social potential embedded within these mono-functional infrastructures. Rather than treating adaptive reuse as a simple replacement of program, the thesis focuses on transformation as an open-ended process. The decline in parking demand is understood not as a deficit, but as an opportunity for spatial and social reactivation.
Building on this foundation, the design proposal develops a process-based concept that engages closely with the existing structure and its urban context. By identifying latent spatial qualities and gradually introducing new community-oriented uses, the project generates interactions between architecture, program, and users. The design is conceived as a flexible framework rather than a fixed final state, establishing interconnected interventions that redefine the parking garage as a resilient and socially embedded urban structure.