Parking Structure 5 (PS5), Sacramento, USA
Searching for a parking lot has come to an end for California State University students: A six-floor parking garage brings relief and features a direct connection to the university through the façade.
When temperatures rise in Sacramento, California, during the summer, places in the shade are in high demand. This is especially true for drivers in search of a parking space. But students at California State University usually had to search for a long time to find a parking space because the university parking lots were chronically overcrowded. And the space next to the main driveway to the campus also offered no shade.
To meet the extensive demand, the university decided to replace the existing parking lot with a multi-floor parking garage: Parking Structure 5 (PS 5). The architectural team at Dreyfuss + Blackford and precast concrete plant Clark Pacific was confronted with a tight schedule: The construction phase had to be limited to only one semester.
“Located by the main entrance to the Sacramento State campus, Parking Structure 5 is designed to blend and complement the dense trees of the nearby arboretum,” said the architects, describing their vision. The façade of the six-floor complex was equipped with metal fins of different sizes and shades of green. The shadows they cast on the concrete surface look like the canopy of a tree, creating a direct reference to the immediate surroundings of the parking garage. “Covering the three upper levels of the structure, precast concrete is textured with a pattern that nods to the rough bark of the birch trees in the adjacent arboretum,” said the architects.
To meet the tight schedule, the architects opted for a precast system from the American company Clark Pacific. The company specializes in efficient production and can rely on a type of modular system for projects such as PS 5. The company made spandrels and beams in 60 days, and created the other required columns in 51 days.
RECKLI’s American subsidiary US Formliner supplied 11 formliners for the design of precast concrete elements that were used for the façade. The formwork panels were manufactured to the specifications of the architects in the US Formliner plant in Athens, Georgia, and then delivered to Clark Pacific in Sacramento. The concrete specialists produced a total of 288 prefabricated elements for the project with seven 34 x 5 inch (86.36 x 12.7 centimeter) horizontal formliners and four 39-6 x 4-inch vertical formliners (100.58 x 10.16 centimeters).
“Formliners make a clean and crisp product that looks exceptionally nice for a lesser price then steel and a higher quality than wood,” said Bob Roumiguiere of Clark Pacific. The ease of handling structural formliners, whose elasticity makes it easy to peel off dried concrete and reuse them up to 100 times, is a time and cost benefit for the Clark Pacific professionals. “They make it easier on the production team on a day to day basis and cut down on the hours needed for form changes and cleanup. They give you the ability to do extremely intricate and beautiful designs that you wouldn’t think possible with concrete,” said Roumiguiere.
Clark Pacific takes advantage of these features regularly: For five years, the company has relied on US Formliner products and has already used structural formliners in various projects in the production of precast concrete parts. The California State University parking garage was completed in 2018 and has since received five awards: The National Parking Institute honored the construction as an innovative and sustainable project for the year 2018; the American Concrete Institute awarded the project team of PS 5 the Structural Award 2018. PS 5 was also honored for its sustainable design at this year’s Precast Concrete Institute Design Award.