The Corcoran parking deck, Durham’s oldest parking garage, is situated between two downtown districts, “City Center” and “American Tobacco”. When it was deemed cost prohibitive to rebuild the 1960’s 658 space deck, RND Architects looked for opportunities to honor the story of the deck in Durham’s history and to humanize the spaces in and around the deck. As architects specializing in renovation and rehabilitation work, RND’s challenge is always to maximize the human experience of space through design while meeting our clients’ strict budget requirements.

In this project, RND updated the vehicle and human spaces to improve egress, applied new paint colors to help people locate their cars and access public streets, and designed level, accessible parking spaces and paths to better enable wheelchair and ambulatory access to the City Center. The neutral cool grey and white color scheme of the exterior enhances the physical form of the structure as part of the urban fabric.

To more strongly associate the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) parking with the Corcoran Deck, large vertical banners depicting a performer at the American Dance Festival were attached to the exterior of the garage. The imagery connects the deck with the newly achieved intersections of art, culture, movement, and energy of downtown Durham. The idea of creative human movement within a historical framework created the appropriate connection between American Tobacco and City Center.

The Corcoran Parking Deck improvements enable people to link the improvements in the American Tobacco district to improvements in the City Center. With a cosmetically and structurally improved deck, downtown visitors can feel better about parking in what was formerly an anonymous, dark parking deck and now a friendly and easily navigable space.