03.23.2022 Breathing new life into a 60s multi-story carpark

It’s hard to think of anything less joyful than a 1960s concrete town centre car park. But one of our award winning projects, Ruskin Park, is a great example of how creativity and design can transform even the most uninspiring of spaces into something really quite special.  Today, we’re catching up with Director, Polly, to find out more about reimagining the Ruskin Square car park in Croydon….

What was the problem with Ruskin Park?

Although this car park near East Croydon train station was still within its serviceable life, this did not mean that it was doing its job. It looked awful and parts of the building’s structure were starting to fail. Access to the building was really poor and there were serious problems with both safety and anti-social behaviour.

How did PCH reinvigorate this tired building?

There were three main areas that we focused on to help bring this building back to life:

1. The exterior

We repaired and enhanced the beautiful concrete corrugated façade, returning the exterior to its former glory. We put in new glass around the stairwell and lifts to create open, light filled spaces people could actually enjoy, while having the surrounding area properly landscaped as a piece of urban forestry really softened the look of the building.

2. Safety

The new berry edge system’s vision mesh and buffers now protect against full impact collisions and improves how safe the open edges are – it also looks much more inviting than the previous metal panels.

3. Signage and lighting

Internally, we introduced a bespoke ‘wayfinding’ system – painting arrows and clear level numbers onto columns, floors and walls in a bold yellow and grey super graphic. We installed a new LED light system for the walkways and put in lights on the roof level which had previously had no lighting at all. All this has made the space much safer and much easier on the eye.

And finally….

Ruskin Square Car Park is an award winning renovation project – it won Best Car Park Refurbishment at the British Parking Awards 2018 and a 2018 RICS Award in the Infrastructure category.