Christian Kerez The Four Car Parks located in the old city center of Muharraq are part of the Pearl Path project by the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, serving as civic spaces that can also be used for prayer, events, or markets.
The parking facilities consist of four buildings with a total area of 45,000 m². Although placed on different plots, the buildings follow the same design principles. The slabs bend and slope, sometimes merging into each other to serve as ramps connecting one level to another. Transformed into different geometries, the slabs provide a distinctive spatial experience when moving up or down through the car parks. With the movement of cars, the buildings become continuously changing spaces.
The exposed structure consists only of slabs and columns. The 10-meter span generated very high punching forces. The stairs and elevator shafts are totally exposed, with the latter covered by transparent foil.
Because no slab is identical, an endless diversity of spaces is created. The formwork is based on conventional industrial products such as scaffolding towers, with very little custom-made formwork. Due to the constantly changing surfaces, 75,000 sections were x-scripted and printed 1:1 on site for construction. The project combined a large workforce with the contemporary possibilities of computing to create its endlessly varied geometry.

Christian Kerez
Christian Kerez is an architecture firm founded in 1993 by Swiss architect Christian Kerez and based in Zurich. The firm is known for its experimental designs that challenge conventional architectural norms, often exploring structural no_expression and spatial perception.