We’ve delved into the exclusive world of supercar garage design before, noting how both specialists and car makers themselves are exploring the architectural environs of high-end car collecting.
An underground garage for the automotive acquisitive
Garage Deluxe is a new venture from London-based studio Jonathan Clark Architects, a specialist in commercial interiors and bespoke residential design. Surmising that clients who have accumulated more than a triple garage’s worth of collector’s cars might need somewhere more secure to keep them, Clark and his team created Garage Deluxe to cater for automotive acquisitives.
The concept is simple: an underground car park that can outfitted to the same level and quality as a basement gym or spa area. Built using either a pre-cast or in-situ concrete structure, the most efficient way to carve out such a substantial volume is the cut and cover method, rather than involve extensive tunnelling (although that is always an option, depending on site conditions).
These renders show a proposed subterranean store for a clutch of Ferraris, old and new. Access is via a long ramp – necessarily shallow because of the low ground clearance of your typical supercar – into a wood-clad vault, lit by a circular skylight and topped out by a raised study and entertaining area from which to survey the fleet.
The company proposes access via a large hydraulic-activated ramp door, a feature that adds a touch of Ken Adam-esque drama (or Gerry Anderson, depending on your cultural reference points) to the entrance. When not in use, the access folds back into the landscape.
Fixtures, finishes, even scope and depth are all down to the client, naturally, although the fundamental details, like the slatted timber that conceals the services, can be applied at any scale. Heating is essential for the perfect preservation of increasingly fragile classics, while combustion engines need robust ventilation to be used underground. Options are unlimited; a car lift could easily replace the shallow ramp in a small site, for example.
One day, some future civilisation will stumble across one of these buried bunkers and marvel at the complexity and scale of our culture’s grave goods. Whether intended as a museum or mausoleum, Garage Deluxe makes perfect space for these priceless machines.
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