Not only parking lots

The traffic crisis that results from the great number of vehicles in circulation in cities, together with the contrary need to find a balance between public space and the aesthetic-environmental quality as a whole, and especially in historical centres, has determined the growing central role of parking lots in view of any serious perspective regarding the re-qualified management of urban structures. The recognition of a need which has not yet been met with the corresponding recognition of a potential architectural opportunity, both public and private, capable of offering itself as an asset in the contexts in which it is placed, thus determining the preferred short-cut of transferring it underground. The problem, therefore, of the “aesthetic annexation” of a structure currently considered as purely utilitarian in nature, and even impermeable to formal values, is seen instead as an opportunity for a meaningful expression of civil architecture, that is of a topical contemporary public space. Especially in its version as an extroverted building, perhaps even combined with other functions, it can represent a thematic field that stands as a paradigm for the unusual mutations which affect the contemporary functional and design customs and the use of cities in terms of a new environmental and aesthetic sustainability.