In defence of Bristol’s Rupert Street

Twentieth Century Society calls for pioneering 1950s car park to be saved and reinvented

The Rupert Street car park in Bristol should be saved from demolition, says the Twentieth Century Society (C20). The charity has submitted an application to list the city centre car park as a pioneering example of 1950s multi-storey design and the first car park in the UK to feature a continuous spiral ramp.

Rupert Street was built by the Multidek Development Group between December 1959 and October 1960 to designs by the architect R Jelinek-Karl and engineers GC Mander & Partners.

The C20 Society says: “Rupert Street is a bold and sculptural building, this is a superb example of 1960s Brutalism that clearly expresses its function and structure, while being a true innovation in the field of car park design.”

There are just three listed post-1945 car parks in England: Coventry Retail Market, Preston Bus Station and the former Cole Brothers’ department store in Sheffield.

Located close to the proposed inner ring road at Lewins Mead in the heart of the city’s rebuilt shopping and commercial centre, the 35,000 square foot (3,000 square metres) Rupert Street site accommodates six decks of parking for around 550 cars.

Elliptical in plan and based on axis of 20 feet and 129 feet, the levels are linked by a continuous half-a-mile long ramp that spirals around a central lift and staircase block. The ramp rises at a relatively slight gradient of 1 in 32 on the straight and 1 in 60 on the outer curve, with a rise of 5 foot over the length of one floor – or one half-circuit. At 56 foot wide, it provides a central carriageway of 24 foot which can accommodate twoway traffic and allows for 16x6 foot parking spaces either side.

Property firm Student Roost wants to demolish the car park in order to make way for a 21-storey student accommodation block on the site. If built, it would be the second tallest structure in the city, incorporating ground floor retail and 450 car parking spaces – 100 fewer than is provided by the existing Rupert Street car park. A planning application is expected in spring 2023.

The C20 Society says the demolition of the concrete structure would have a significant carbon cost.

Open source data on parking provision in the city indicates that there is still high demand for public car parking in Bristol.

Excluding the reservation-only parking at Cabot Circus shopping complex, the NCP operated Rupert Street car park provides nearly 10% of all car parking spaces in the Central and Broadmead areas of Bristol.

The city council recently increased charges at its car parks and on-street bays in and around the city centre, as part of a sustained bid to persuade more people to ditch their cars and switch to more sustainable modes of transport, such as walking, cycling, public transport and park & ride. The Bristol clean air zone also came into force in 2022, as part of the council’s efforts to meet the legal limits for traffic produced air pollution.

The C20 Society says such policy initiatives are to be welcomed. It believes the Rupert Street car park represents an opportunity to adapt to the changing demands of vehicles in cities: repurposing an historic example of automobile architecture as a dedicated storage and charging hub for electric and super low-emission vehicles.

Bristol aims to achieve 100% ultra low emission vehicle (ULEV) coverage by 2050. According to a 2019 report by the Schumacher Institute, this would require between 6,000 and 23,000 chargepoints –the city currently has just 81. The report concedes: “Bristol’s streets do not tend to support public parking, or at least they were not built for it.” One solution, seen in the likes of Oslo, San Francisco and Amsterdam, would be “the introduction of exclusive electric car parking lots in desirable city centre locations”.