Advantages for Designers

Automated Parking Systems by Simmatec allow for greater creative freedom for the designer whether they be an architect, landscape architect, urban designer, or transportation designer. Its high flexibility and ability to conform to varying site conditions allows for new solutions to the designer's problem that could not have been considered with traditional parking.

Advantages for Architects

Every architect knows that a project is often determined by the parking problem. Parking drives design because of the stringent parking requirements of most municipalities. This often limits the ability of architects to create innovative projects and are often left with a large parking block and a small footprint for the actual project.

With Automated Parking Systems by Simmatec, the architect has greater flexibility in design and in many cases makes a project feasible when it is infeasible with traditional parking. Its seven highly configurable and customizable systems let an architect's design take precedence over parking. Whether the parking systems are displayed as an innovative architectural feature or buried underneath the ground efficiently, the systems's compact nature allows for great flexibility of design and the ability of the designer to increase program requirements, add distinct architectural features and spaces, and generally gives the architect a great freedom in design.

The systems also provide an opportunity for the architect to consider parking as a parking experience rather than a dark, dirty, security nightmare. By incorporating innovative design, valet/concierge services, and branding opportunities in the parking system's entry and exit areas, parking can be a great design opportunity.

Additionally, the green aspect of Automated Parking Systems by Simmatec bolsters an architect's move towards greener design and reaching LEED certification standards. By incorporating these systems, the architect can innovate in design while beating the competition in designing greener buildings.

Advantages for Landscape Architects

Automated Parking Systems by their nature can provide the Landscape Architect more ground to innovate with. By its compact footprint and volume and its ability to be sunken underground efficiently, a Landscape Architect can turn the parking problem into a landscape solution.

The parking systems can be designed with a minimal entry & exit bay building, leaving what would be a field of asphalt into an opportunity to plant more greenery, build innovative greenscapes and hardscapes, and provide a landscape solution that can enliven a city, provide play areas for children, provide areas for shade providing trees, and generate fresh clean air.

By thinking of these systems as an enabler of their practice, landscape architects can work to turn unsightly urban hardscapes into greenscapes.

Advantages for Designers

The Urban Designer creates an expanded pallet to play with when considering Automated Parking Systems. With these systems, the Urban Designer can look at the urban fabric and see opportunities everywhere parking takes up valuable real estate. The Urban Designer can turn parking lots into parks, playgrounds, public meeting spaces, urban theaters, farmer's markets, water features, and countless other uses. The Urban Designer can take cars off the street, put them under the street, and widen sidewalks for street side cafes, dedicated bike paths, greenery, and countless other uses besides parking cars. The Urban Designer can tear down unsightly parking structures and enliven streetscapes by replacing the structures with cafes, retail, hotels, and useable space. With Automated Parking Systems, the Urban Designer's practice is freed from the burden of cars and truly opens us the urban landscape to innovation, to new ideas, and preserves it for people rather than cars.

Advantages for Transportation Designers

With the movement and emphasis of the city, state, and federal governments on mass transit, transit-oriented development, and reducing vehicular traffic, the transportation designer has the unusual problem of dealing with the automobile, a form of transportation that is not going away any time soon.

Automated Parking Systems by Simmatec, takes the burden of the automobile and enables the transportation designer to move vehicles off the street efficiently and compactly. By removing parking from the street, the transportation designer frees up lanes for additional vehicular traffic, dedicated bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes, streetcar & light-rail rights-of-way, and other forms of alternative & mass transport. These systems have to be considered as a key to solving the transit & traffic problem because vehicles always need places to park especially in urban areas where the ability to park often makes or breaks an area's commercial & retail viability. A transportation designer cannot simply remove parking from the street without replacing it because vehicles as a mode of transport isn't simply going away and every neighborhood, no matter how efficient and convenient public transport is, still relies on some degree on cars and the ability to accommodate parking cars.

Additionally, Automated Parking Systems enable public transport by providing a high-density parking solution to areas close to public transportation by serving as park & ride facilities that are fast, safe, convenient, & affordable. Often, a public transportation network is only as effective as the ability of the network to provide parking for the patrons that need to drive their car to reach the train station, the bus stop, or ferry boat. With efficient and convenient parking, a public transport network isn't viable because people will rather drive to work than spend minutes searching for parking at the train station.