California Avenue Parking Garage

California Avenue Parking Garage

The best daily activities balance the practical with the ephemeral, the ordinary with the poetic.

The best buildings do this too.

The data reveals that Palo Alto has a new city parking garage supporting a community-scale commercial neighborhood; that this six-story concrete structure holds 636 cars; and, that visitors can drive two stories below earth or four stories above, following a ribbon of park-on roadway spiraling from compressed artificial light to big-sky rooftop glare. We learn this garage aims for environmental responsibility, generating electricity from PVs, filtering stormwater in a system of raingardens and under-pavement water storage.

But this data merely grazes the richer lived experience.

As you dock your vehicle, you hesitate, hands resting gently on steering wheel. A few moments before your scheduled arrival, you pause to trace the line of sunlight skipping along your dashboard. The Silver Linden beyond creates a moiré, your destination visible in fragments as if through Venetian blinds. Before making your way, you linger with diffuse attention. Specular reflections of city pixilate in your view, the distant rhythm of water drops a faint echo from the morning’s cloud burst. The walk downstairs elongates in a slow cascade, prolonging this moment. You’re almost there.