CARCULT CLUB / LONDON

FA VUT - Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture

Project idea

A renovation concept that transforms a brutalist multi-storey car park in Shoreditch, London into a vertical urban block celebrating car culture, mobility, and urban activation through orange-painted extensions, playable infrastructure, and mixed programming.

Project description

The project site is at 35 Great Eastern Street, Shoreditch, London. The building is known as the American Carwash building, constructed in the early 1960s as a multi-storey concrete car park. The renovation concept restores the building's raw concrete nature, celebrating its brutalist core. All new extensions are painted in a singular vibrant shade of orange to signify play and leisure and to attract traffic attention. The repetitive concrete slabs are reactivated as active tracks, much like looping interconnecting circuits of Hot Wheels sets. Each ramp, bridge, and slab is no longer just circulation but part of a continuous driving narrative. The main program focuses on car culture, tuning, graffiti, fast food carts, metallurgic installations, and urban festivals. The building celebrates mobility, culture, and playfulness through concrete and orange elements, public activation, and sustainable rainwater use. Inner activities were designed to fuse youthful urban amenities with car culture containers of food cart and similar services.

Technical information

The building's facades will feature glass curtain walls. Triangular patterned walls allow daylight into interior spaces. The back block containing stairs will be repaired, and the top-most block will be demolished to clarify views. The triangular orientation of structural patterns creates visual dynamics. A car lift is rebuilt to serve two cars at the same time. A newly added orange chimney column collects rainwater to be reused for plant watering and carwash purposes. The ground floor height slope is approximately 6.5°, designed for safe movement and pedestrian comfort. The overextended newer framework will proceed outfitting with energy-saving efficiency. The exposed brutalist identity preserves and frames all triangular movement within a clear structural logic.

Documentation

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