#car fortress — Modernist Delights

Theatre Royal car park, Plymouth, 2025

A large, multi-storey concrete car park with rounded edges and horizontal lines dominates a mostly empty urban street. The sky is partly cloudy, and a tall office building is visible in the background. Road signs and pedestrian crossings surround the car park.

A multi-storey concrete car park with wide, flat, textured floors and gaps between levels. A white streetlamp stands in front, and a metal fence borders the pavement. Yellow and red pillars are visible inside, with a partly cloudy sky above.

A multi-storey, concrete car park with three main levels, supported by red and blue columns. There’s a street in front with a railing and a yellow sign warning of a car park height restriction. The sky is cloudy.

A multi-storey concrete car park with three visible levels. No Entry signs and barriers block the entrance. Faded NO ENTRY is painted on the ground. The sky is partly cloudy above the building. The scene appears quiet and empty.

Staircases, Torquay, 2025

A closed shopfront with a sign reading otto. Two symmetrical staircases lead up on either side, separated by a central railing and a grated window. Overcast sky and some palm trees are visible above the structure. The area appears empty.

Merseyway Shopping Centre car park, Stockport, 2025

A close-up view of a tall, brutalist concrete building with vertical columns and geometric patterns. The weathered façade features deep grooves, angular cut-outs, and repeating rectangular forms. The sky above is overcast, adding a sombre tone.

A concrete wall with a grid of geometric cut-outs in various shapes lets light and glimpses of sky through, casting shadows and creating a pattern of rectangles and squares across the surface.

A tall, weathered concrete structure with a faded green door and peeling paint displays a large blue “PRIMARK” sign at the top. The building stands on a rain-soaked rooftop car park under a grey, overcast sky.

A wet, empty rooftop car park under a cloudy sky features a tall, dark brick tower in the centre, surrounded by white, weathered concrete barriers and posts. The scene looks desolate and industrial, with reflections visible on the rain-soaked ground.

A heavily weathered concrete barrier with rectangular cut-outs stands on a rooftop. Through the central cut-out, a car park and distant buildings are visible under a cloudy grey sky, creating a sense of urban decay and overcast atmosphere.

Baynard House, City of London, 2025

A building with 4 floors of continuous thin-framed aluminium windows, as well as vertical ribbed concrete between each floor. At the bottom, a series of metal horizontal vents and an entrance to an underground carpark.

The building was designed by William Holford incorporating a separation of pedestrians from streets, with a first-floor adjoining walkway along Queen Victoria Street that connects to Blackfriars station.
Baynard House, London – Wikipedia

Streets in the sky! Definitely one to go back to. It is, however, a nightmare to photograph, owing to the coach parking out front.

Chorlton Street Car Park, Manchester, 2025

A multistorey car park above a gay pub. There are 4 storeys at the front, with a ramp up to 3 storeys at the back. There's a spiral entrance ramp mostly out of shot to the left. The columns are NCP yellow.

Buoyed by the consulate renewing my passport in 5 minutes flat, and with the sun out, I set off to take some photos today… until the heavens opened 😣

Multistorey car fortress, Shoreditch, London, 2025

Various road traffic lights in the foreground, followed by a spring-green tree, then right in the centre of the image a narrow, graffitied multistorey carpark, with various glass London skyscrapers in the background.

Close up shot of graffitied multistorey carpark, taken at ground level. It fills almost the whole picture, with only a little bit of a skyscraper and the dark blue spring afternoon sky in the background.

Side of multistorey carpark, taken from ground level. The side of the concrete is made out of concrete panels, and the top part of it is graffitied. Below that, a rusty sign which reads: CAR PARK P_TRO_ - Meyers Bros Parking System. The rest of the image features the graffitied tiers and stairway of the car park, with the dark blue late afternoon sky in the background.

Courtesy of this Flickr comment thread, which incredibly includes the niece of one of the Meyers Bros referenced by the sign, the Meyers Bros Parking System was ramp-less, instead operated by lifts which brought the cars up and down the storeys of the car park.

Stockport Exchange Station Car Park, 2024

A multi-level parking garage at night is brightly lit, with rows of parked cars visible through open sides. Streetlights illuminate the foreground, where a person walks near several parked vehicles. The surrounding area appears quiet and clean.

Not modernist, but I like how this one turned out.

Sun-dappled car fortress in the Northern Quarter, Manchester, 2025

A red brick multi-storey car park stands on a street corner under a clear blue sky. Several yellow P parking signs are mounted on the building. A person walks past the entrance, and sunlight casts strong shadows on the walls.

A brick building with three floors, each featuring rectangular, open window spaces without glass. The lower level has barred windows and graffiti on the right. The façade is sunlit with shadows, and the roof has black lamps. Sky above is clear and blue.

This doesn’t qualify as modernist, or even really as a delight, but it made me laugh how something so thoroughly modern and utilitarian masquerades itself amongst the Northern Quarter’s Victorian mills and factories with the use of red brick. A concept long forgotten in Manchester’s development-mania, of course, with everything now built out of steel, concrete, glass, and cladding.

Panning across a parkade, Toronto, 1996

David Cronenberg filmed this shot specifically for me.