Balconies for cars

I live in Buenos Aires: househunting a few years ago I visited an apartment here that had a huge elevator to bring your car upto the apartment. It was the weirdest kitschiest place I've seen. (it was in the neighborhood of Palermo).

I will try to remember the address and send you a picture if I can remember it -- and find it.

Or maybe one of your readers will have seen it (you have many fans here in Argentina)

and in dense urban setting like San Francisco, where tickets and tow-aways are rampant, and you are often times forced to drive around for hours with a headache, hungry, tired, angry, before deciding to just park your wheels up on a sidewalk in some dark alley, this way your car is off the strret. no more waking up at 6 am to move it out of the way of the street cleaners, no more forgetting where the hell you parked one really drunken night you shouldnt have managed to drive home. no more tight squeezes, or playing parking war with other desperate vehicles.
i dont even own a car here, but, well, alright, nuff said.

Very cool idea. Sort of reminds me of the posts I've seen of car parking places that are basically big automobile vending machines...however,

What if the elevator gets stuck somehow? I mean, I know that doesn't happen often with elevators (especially very new ones), but the last thing you want is to screw everyone else over because the car elevator is out of order. Also, what if there were an emergency where everyone needed to get their car out?

Still, the convenience factor of this idea is pretty amazing.

818 grand Ave in downtown L.A. is an old phone company that has a car elevator that is no longer used for cars, they developed the areas that the vehicles could park. There is also a large turn-table inside the main floor for spinning you car around too.

When I was in Taiwan- the underground garage enterence/exit was with a car elevator like what's describe above. There was once (that I know of) that someone let go of the break and crashed into the walls there. Since that was only a one floor elevator - wasn't a huge problem. However, if a car crashes inside something like the illustration.. that might be a problem.

my 2 cents

This is already a common feature of apartments in many countries. I know a lot of high-rise apartments in Iran have this.

I can just see people scraping their sides because they couldn't quite get the car in perfectly. But if executed well, this would solve quite a bit of the parking problems.

Hydraulic elevators are pretty simple units and have the advantage that they are hugely reliable.

Example http://www.indiamart.com/real-elevators/#car-elevators

What a cool Idea. I've seen a show about the same type of vertical car lot in Japan about 10 years ago. so this is not a new idea.

Excellent idea. That would be great.

Easy access to your car (no having to wander half way down the street to the last crummy parking spot you could find when you parked.)

I love it

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. No... seriously! Just build an underground car park for all the cars and have two extra bedrooms (one in the space for the garage, one in the space for the lift). It's a total waste of space.

Plus imagine waiting in the morning for the lift to move - not to mention the fun you'll have when it breaks down.

What if everyone is trying to get out during morning commute time? That will tie up the elevator for a while .... Balcony traffic jam.

Im just wondering how long ppl will have to wait for the lift when everyone is in line @ 5:00PM after work.

Unfortunately in urban evironments (NYC, SF) I think most builders would rather use that space as another bedroom. They could charge more money for another bedroom than a parking spot. Still looks cool as hell and I would love one in NYC, but never gonna happen here.

yeah... because we all want to listen to some jackass revving up his "tuner" car going to work at 4 in the morning descending past our rooms....

@ Bwilly

Not so about the money charged for parking vs. an extra room. Here in Chicago you can charge $250-$350 a month for a parking spot alone, not to mention that things like this would only go in high-end condos, not regular apartment buildings. People would pay far more for the premium and uniqueness of the spot than they would for an extra room.

It would be much better if the car became itself an extra room in the house. That means that the car should be part of the building in a different way. The environment and the ways of using the space should change radically when it was parked there.
But if safety is the only excuse for this kind of thing, then it´s just silly. There are easier ways to solve this problem (should architecture solve this problem, anyway?)

All I can say is people will use the Car parking space to store their junk and park the car outside. There is no lack to useless junk.

KG

This is the future, except that your flying car won't need the elevator.

thats awesome! it makes me want to live in the city now.

Isn't this just like the setup in Tom Cruises apartment in Minority Report?

Thanks for writing about this!! Manfred is my cousin, and I hope this works out for him. It's close to being put into construction.

You will find more informations about the "carloft" under carloft.de