The Vail Founder's Park and Garage - Vail, CO
This project was the first step in organizing and, in a way, re-inventing the service aspects of one of the world's most well known ski resorts. The Vail Village had always lacked certain amenities which, in the current ski industry, are considered obligatory. Vail's Front Door, of which this project is a portion, illustrated to the community that VRDC had come to realize they had to start inserting skier service elements at the village and at the base of the hill, which a developer like Disney for example, would have designed into the back of house elements prior to above ground construction.
One of the most serious deficiencies for the town has to do with parking. The resort currently believes that they will need another 1000 parking spaces in the near future in order to make the place run smoothly. This project, know un-romantically during design as Lots P3 & J, occupies what was literally a hole in the fabric of the village. The two lots had always been used as surface parking, and were a constant eyesore amongst many fine and some original, Vail buildings.
Robert Fitzgerald and his team used this opportunity to construct a "story" whereby, instead of a dusty parking lot in the center of the village, there would ultimately appear to be the original, rustic and relatively small Bavarian cabin; one which had perhaps been constructed back before the town grew up around it. With this theme accepted by the planning commission, the elevator and machine rooms of a 117 car-parking garage, which spiral downward in cork-screw fashion into the earth below, could be disguised within a vernacular alpine building. The grade of the site, along with the famous "auto chute" nearby, allows for all of the automobile traffic to occur away from the ski slope side of the garage; while the top of it becomes a landscape of green space and "the original Vail cabin" site.
Photos
This project was the first step in organizing and, in a way, re-inventing the service aspects of one of the world's most well known ski resorts. The Vail Village had always lacked certain amenities which, in the current ski industry, are considered obligatory. Vail's Front Door, of which this project is a portion, illustrated to the community that VRDC had come to realize they had to start inserting skier service elements at the village and at the base of the hill, which a developer like Disney for example, would have designed into the back of house elements prior to above ground construction.
One of the most serious deficiencies for the town has to do with parking. The resort currently believes that they will need another 1000 parking spaces in the near future in order to make the place run smoothly. This project, know un-romantically during design as Lots P3 & J, occupies what was literally a hole in the fabric of the village. The two lots had always been used as surface parking, and were a constant eyesore amongst many fine and some original, Vail buildings.
Robert Fitzgerald and his team used this opportunity to construct a "story" whereby, instead of a dusty parking lot in the center of the village, there would ultimately appear to be the original, rustic and relatively small Bavarian cabin; one which had perhaps been constructed back before the town grew up around it. With this theme accepted by the planning commission, the elevator and machine rooms of a 117 car-parking garage, which spiral downward in cork-screw fashion into the earth below, could be disguised within a vernacular alpine building. The grade of the site, along with the famous "auto chute" nearby, allows for all of the automobile traffic to occur away from the ski slope side of the garage; while the top of it becomes a landscape of green space and "the original Vail cabin" site.
