Picton Carpark is a two-level public parking structure at the edge of Picton town center in New South Wales, Australia. Designed as a long, open concrete framework for approximately 250 vehicles, it uses scale, color, landscape, and public circulation to mediate between Picton’s heritage streetscape and the adjoining paddocks and bushland.
Picton Carpark Technical Information
- ArchitectsLockhart-Krause Architects
- LocationWalton Street and Menangle Street, Picton, NSW, Australia
- Project Year2026
- Photographs© Martin Siegner
New architecture does not need to pretend to be old in order to belong. It can be contemporary while still understanding the place it is part of.
– Lockhart-Krause Architects
Infrastructure at the Town-Landscape Threshold
Picton Carpark occupies a transitional site where Picton’s compact commercial and civic fabric meets open paddocks, tree-covered slopes, and bushland. Its trapezoidal footprint follows this irregular urban edge, creating a low horizontal datum rather than a freestanding object. The two-level structure accommodates approximately 250 vehicles across a ground floor and open rooftop deck, but its architectural consequence lies in how it registers the changing character of its surroundings.
The building is positioned to defer to Picton’s existing civic markers. The Post Office clock tower, completed in 1892, remains the dominant vertical element within the town center, while St Mark’s Anglican Church retains its visual presence at the Menangle Street end of the site. A setback from Menangle Street and a deliberately restricted height prevent the car park from competing with these landmarks. In elevation, the roofline stays close to the church eaves, allowing the historic buildings and their relationship to the hillside to remain the priority.
Rather than using monumentality to announce a public function, the project treats infrastructure as a background framework for arrival, circulation, and occupation. From the aerial view, its pale roof deck and darker perimeter band read as a narrow constructed threshold between town and landscape. This restraint matters in a small-town context, where new civic infrastructure can easily disrupt the visual hierarchy established by older buildings and low-rise streets.
Heritage Dialogue Through Scale, Color, and Material
The project avoids heritage imitation. Its structural language is unequivocally contemporary: flat concrete slabs, cylindrical columns, solid ramp enclosures, and open parking decks respond directly to programmatic requirements. Yet the building relates to its context through proportion and chromatic calibration. Picton’s civic fabric is defined by red brick, sandstone, tiled roofs, and earthy tones, and the carpark translates this palette into a contemporary surface treatment rather than reproducing historic detail.
Two red-brown tones organize the concrete frame. A lighter terracotta-pink is applied across wall blades, stair cores, and selected columns, while a deeper brick-red marks parapets, ramp balustrades, upper spandrel bands, and other columns. The alternating color of the supports gives the Walton Street elevation a measured rhythm, breaking down the apparent length of the parking deck. Ramp enclosures become larger blocks within this composition, clarifying circulation while punctuating the otherwise repetitive structural grid.
The mineral paint treatment does not conceal the concrete beneath it. Formwork joints, tie holes, pour lines, and variations in aggregate and weathering remain visible across the painted surfaces. This retains evidence of construction and prevents colour from becoming a cosmetic layer detached from the building’s tectonic character. At closer range, the smooth off-form concrete sits beside ribbed metal infill panels in matching tones, producing a limited but effective contrast between cast, painted, and profiled surfaces.
Open Structure, Movement, and Street Interface
The ground floor is conceived as an open column-and-flat-slab framework rather than an enclosed parking hall. Daylight enters from all sides, and the visual field extends through the structure toward the town center, planted verges, and open paddock beyond. Exposed slab soffits, surface-mounted lighting, and painted circular columns establish a practical material register, but the open perimeter reduces the sense of enclosure commonly associated with multi-story parking structures.
Vehicle movement is arranged through ramps at opposite ends of the building, connecting ground-level parking with the rooftop deck. Separate entry and exit points on Walton Street distinguish vehicular flows, while stair cores, pedestrian crossings, accessible bays, and direct exits address the more complex overlap of people and cars. Wayfinding is embedded within the architecture through vertically arranged entry and exit lettering on columns and wall blades. Recessed lighting at the slab edge is designed to wash this lettering at night, making orientation part of the building’s spatial and environmental legibility.
Along Walton Street, the upper deck cantilevers over a colonnaded footpath. This overhang creates a shaded pedestrian edge between the parking structure and the street, allowing the building to participate in public circulation instead of presenting a closed facade. The deep shadow beneath the slab also gives the elevation a clear sectional expression: an inhabited roof plane above, a porous civic threshold below, and planting distributed at the base of the columns.
Adaptability, Landscape, and Civic Occupation
The open ground floor and rooftop deck offer capacities beyond daily parking. Their dimensions, robust surfaces, and direct access make them suitable for car gatherings, markets, exhibitions, and informal community events without major spatial changes. During the monthly Cars and Coffee gathering documented in the photographs, the structure becomes a setting for display, conversation, food stalls, and pedestrian movement. The event demonstrates how an ordinary parking framework can support public occupation when circulation areas remain open, visible, and adaptable.
The rooftop level also introduces an elevated public viewpoint within Picton’s otherwise low-rise townscape. From the deck, the Post Office clock tower, church roofscape, surrounding homes, and distant vegetation are brought into a single visual field. This position makes the relationship between town and landscape more explicit. The parapet provides a safe edge for parking while functioning as a viewing line from which visitors can look back toward the civic landmarks that structure Picton’s identity.
The landscape serves as a gradual counterpart to the concrete frame. Rain gardens, native grasses, groundcovers, and young trees occupy the site edges and planted beds along the street. Vertical tension wires support climbing plants intended to extend across selected facade zones over time. This strategy does not erase the carpark’s utilitarian character, but introduces seasonal change, shade, and ecological texture to its perimeter. As planting matures, the building’s hard structural grid will be increasingly read through a developing layer of vegetation.
About Lockhart-Krause Architects
Lockhart-Krause Architects is based in Sydney, Australia. The studio’s approach, as expressed through Picton Carpark, develops contemporary architecture that responds to place through scale, materials, landscape, history, and community.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: Wollondilly Shire Council
- Construction company: KANE Constructions
- Paint system: KEIM
- Photography: Martin Siegner
