ARDS - Architectural Retard Design Standards

[cawimmer430]

Lately I've been encountering a ton of garage designs in Germany which have clearly been designed by retards. It is extremely difficult to drive through these garages and park there with a modern car.


In the video below I'll show you the entrance to Birgit's apartment parking garage, which must have been designed for micro cars of the 1950s. The first time I drove down there in my A250, I had to fold in my side mirrors. In the video the scene looks "spacious" because I was filming with the wide angle (0.8) lens on the iPhone. What bothers me is the unnecessary hand railing on the right-hand-side (hardly visible in the video but in the second video) and the huge yellow-black stripped pillar right in front of your car's snout which makes maneuvering for longer and wider cars extremely difficult. A total RETARD design.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ1-ysJewLA



The second time I didn't have to bother with this, but it was still very tight.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeB9okWp-EM



Also, the parking spaces here are so tight. Birgit sent me a photo of what she has to deal with. The Volvo SUV parks like this everyday and makes it difficult for her to get into her i3S. If she parks closer to the wall, the Volvo SUV driver will park even closer to her so that they can comfortably exit their car.





Oh, and in the same parking garage. Give this guy an award for how he parks his huge 5er in his spot. 

[veeman]

Is it possible, do you think, to get more cars squeezed into the parking garage with better layout or have they reached max capacity and layout "ergonomics" were sacrificed in order to achieve max capacity? 

[SJ_GTI]

FWIW, that garage looks like the garage of the apartment building I lived in while living/working in Montreal. It was an old building and the basement of the building was clearly not designed with car parking in mind, but the fit in parking spaces where they could and the spaces were super tight. If you had passengers the right move was to let them out at the front of the building and then go park the car yourself because the spaces were so small that you could barely open doors on a single side.

I assume newer buildings had better parking but who knows, maybe the need for space was so strong that even the newer buildings squeezed in as many parking spaces as possible.

[Morris Minor]

When was the apartment building built. Christian?

[brag] I can open the car doors full-wide all the way in my garage[/brag] I absolutely love it. Everywhere else I'd lived was very tight.

[SJ_GTI]

When was the apartment building built. Christian?

[brag] I can open the car doors full-wide all the way in my garage[/brag] I absolutely love it. Everywhere else I'd lived was very tight.

I cannot. I can open them a comfortable amount though, so I don't feel squeezed or anything.

There is more space in the middle of the garage than the sides, so depending on which side of the garage I park in I can open the driver side door more or less. I back both my cars in, so the Z3 is on the right hand side (from looking at it from the outside) so that driver side I cannot open all the way. I park the Golf on the left so the driver side door is facing inward, so I can open that one all the way.

[CaminoRacer]

I cannot. I can open them a comfortable amount though, so I don't feel squeezed or anything.

There is more space in the middle of the garage than the sides, so depending on which side of the garage I park in I can open the driver side door more or less. I back both my cars in, so the Z3 is on the right hand side (from looking at it from the outside) so that driver side I cannot open all the way. I park the Golf on the left so the driver side door is facing inward, so I can open that one all the way.

I back the El Camino in and then park forwards in whatever other car is in the garage. That way both drivers doors open in the middle of the garage with the most space.

I would like to switch the El Camino to the other side and park forwards, so the exhaust goes out the door instead of accumulating at the back of the garage, near the door to the house. But the water heater is in the corner on that side, so IDK if it will fit as well.

[cawimmer430]

Is it possible, do you think, to get more cars squeezed into the parking garage with better layout or have they reached max capacity and layout "ergonomics" were sacrificed in order to achieve max capacity? 

I believe that the design of that parking garage was from an era when cars were smaller. At that time, the smaller size of the cars meant that they could somewhat "comfortably" park in such spaces. Parking spaces have always been small in Germany, but cars have grown in size and the parking spaces have remained the same in terms of size.

A current "modernization" program should include the removal of one parking space here and there and that extra space should be used to widen existing parking spaces by drawing new parking lines on the floor. Remember - not everyone who lives there owns a car. My apartment parking garage complex for example is basically only 70% full - the rest of the parking spaces are empty because the people who could own them don't own a car.

I think the biggest issue is the cramped entrance and exit driveway and in case of the entrance that stupid pillar. Even back in the day when this was built, that idea was stupid to place a pillar so close to the entrance driveway. What were they thinking... or not thinking...

[cawimmer430]

FWIW, that garage looks like the garage of the apartment building I lived in while living/working in Montreal. It was an old building and the basement of the building was clearly not designed with car parking in mind, but the fit in parking spaces where they could and the spaces were super tight. If you had passengers the right move was to let them out at the front of the building and then go park the car yourself because the spaces were so small that you could barely open doors on a single side.

I assume newer buildings had better parking but who knows, maybe the need for space was so strong that even the newer buildings squeezed in as many parking spaces as possible.

This building design according to Birgit is from the early 1970s. Even for the average car size of that era these parking spaces are "barely manageable", particularly when you want to comfortably exit or enter your car.

[cawimmer430]

When was the apartment building built. Christian?

[brag] I can open the car doors full-wide all the way in my garage[/brag] I absolutely love it. Everywhere else I'd lived was very tight.

Early 1970s according to Birgit.

But even some modern apartment complexes here have such small parking spaces, and even worse - absolutely RETARDED DESIGNED EXITS. Just a few weeks ago I visited a client in what was basically a band new apartment complex which had the most RETARDED EXIT design. It basically looked like this, see graphic below. Even with my "small" A-Class, couldn't take the curb in one go, I had to reverse, go forward, reverse again etc. just  to exit this place. In that garage were Mercedes E-Classes and even G63 AMGs - how the hell do they leave??? It makes me wonder - what kind of moron designs such crap. Why does the exit have to be so tight? Why couldn't the wall on the right also be curved to allow a comfortable exit? Instead it's basically a 90 degree angle which takes up space and complicates things. It's like the design of the exit was a complete afterthought.