Simon Harley's 'L'architecture du parking' rethinks parking garages as functional architecture

Simon Harley's book 'L'architecture du parking', published by Éditions Parenthèses, shifts focus from the automobile itself to what he calls the 'automobile dispositif'. Illustrated with photographs by Sue Barr, the study examines parking garages as functional extensions of cars, shaped by ergonomics, circulation, and speed. Harley argues that their architecture derives from internal order—rational storage and movement—with concrete as the primary material. The book traces historical influences from architects like Auguste Perret, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Robert Law Reed, noting that Wright's Guggenheim Museum ramp was inspired by his earlier Automobile Objective and Planetarium. Concepts of 'habitable circulation' (from Virilio and Parent) and 'obliquity' are invoked to define parking structures as 'abstract prototypes for support and surface, delimitation and enclosure'.