Spaces for Cars – And for People

KVA, in collaboration with Desman Associates, a parking design and engineering firm, and landscape architecture firm Richard Burck Associates, won a competitive public RFP (request for proposals) held by the State of Massachusetts. The team was commissioned by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA) to lead programming and design for a five-story car park to serve the City of Springfield and MassMutual Center, its convention center. As design architect, KVA led programming workshops with ten state and city agencies and community groups. A design concept consensus led MCCA to acquire adjacent property to establish a four-story CarPark with EV charging station capacity, solar-ready rooftop, and an adjacent public plaza designed for flexible, four-season use.

The CarPark reimagines the role of structured parking within a dense urban fabric, creating a welcoming arrival point by prioritizing public presence, pedestrian experience, and natural systems. The building facade uses large-scale environmental graphics and a language of repeated mechanical parts to project its function to visitors and passing drivers. Inside, the pedestrian circulation is organized around a central lightwell, which brings natural daylight and air deep into the building. Glazed vertical circulation cores are located on the perimeter to orient visitors to the city’s Museum District and Downtown Connecticut Riverfront with its history of Springfield transportation and trade. The site design transforms the adjacent vehicular street into an active pedestrian lane with 10,000 square feet of retail and outdoor seating that links the CarPark’s pedestrian entry with the convention center.

The garage facade is inspired by Springfield’s history as the birthplace of the American Manufacturing System of interchangeable parts. A system of recycled aluminum fin panels is folded at different angles to reflect natural light. The panel design engages paint overspray in an innovative way to blur applied color with the reflective aluminum surface and changing sky. This repeated system of fins, each identical, set at different angles, is designed to create changing patterns inspired by natural water flows that become visible from different viewpoints. The panels are assembled into wave figures that run along the facades, providing scale to the CarPark and evoking the curved form of the Connecticut River, which powered the city’s early industrial development.

The original program brief included a parking structure and pedestrian bridge connecting to the convention center. A series of collaborative project visioning workshops with the client, city agencies, and community groups produced consensus that Springfield would be better served by a new public plaza rather than an enclosed pedestrian bridge. The scope of work expanded to include a landscaped civic plaza on the adjacent surface parking lot, funded by budget that had been allocated to the bridge.

The plaza functions as both a public park and a rentable event space that generates revenue for the convention center, increases the urban tree canopy, and expands the site’s permeable surface. The landscaped plaza design provides catenary lights for evening concerts, exhibition games, and events with flexible four-season programming. The car park’s first-level public balcony space and exterior stair system overlook the plaza to enhance public safety and create a proscenium for special events. By introducing daylight, ventilation, and green landscapes, the CarPark design creates a distinctive experience with authentic connections to Springfield’s natural history and industrial innovation as America’s “City of Firsts.”

The Springfield Civic Center and CarPark reflects KVA’s longstanding commitment to the design of resilient infrastructure and architecture in the public realm. Designed to include a daylight well, EV charging, and natural public landscape, Springfield Civic Center and CarPark aligns with KVA’s projects in sustainable public transportation and clean energy, such as New York City’s  East 34th Street Public Ferry Terminal, the Mondo Renewable Solar canopy at Deakin University in Australia, and the Soft House Live/Work housing in Germany.

Email interview conducted by John Hill.