Parking regulations

Parking regulations (in Turkey, the Otopark yönetmeliği) define how many car spaces a new building, or a change of use, must provide and how they should be arranged. The requirement is calculated from the type of use (housing, offices, retail, healthcare and so on) and from the number of units or the floor area. Because municipalities can issue their own parking rules, the same building may come out differently in different cities.

Impact on the project

On tight urban plots, parking is often what decides how many basement levels a building needs and how they are organised. Ramp gradients, turning radii, bay sizes and the separation of cars and pedestrians all feed back into the structural grid. If columns are not placed between bays, a space that exists on paper may be impossible to use.

Where parking cannot be provided on the plot, the legislation may allow other arrangements; the details depend on the local authority. Exact sizes and ratios are found in the regulation in force and the plan notes.

Parking in visualization

For residential marketing, the garage entrance, the ramp and the way they meet the landscape are frequently requested views. A ramp modelled to real dimensions looks right in the final render; one drawn by eye catches attention even in the best light.