I spent a bit of time this afternoon photographing 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. For those of you who aren’t familiar, 1111 is a parking garage that’s so well designed that people throw events – like weddings – in it. It was designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron.

I’ve been through the building before, but one thing I missed the last time around was the 5th floor retail space pictured above. Conventional wisdom would tell you that upper level retail doesn’t really work all that well. But here you have a boutique shop with nothing around it besides parking stalls.

What makes this case different? Is it the architecture? The desirability of this particular structure? Or is it that the store has enough of a following that it can draw people up and into it?

One of the things that’s becoming a lot more common in Toronto is parking stackers. For small infill sites there’s simply no other way to fit in the parking. You can’t lay out a traditional parking garage.

But while it’s still relatively new for Toronto, I think many of you would be surprised by how many projects there are in the pipeline right now that plan to use parking stackers. In the next 5 to 10 years, they are going to be quite common.

Some of you might be wondering how they work. There are a bunch of different solutions, from stackers to elevators and palettes, but here’s an example of a triple car stacker:

In this case, there’s a below grade pit and an open space that goes up into the second floor. This way each car remains accessible without having to move any of the others. If you want the car on the top shelf, just lower the other 2 into the pit. If you want want the car on the bottom shelf, just raise the other 2 into the second floor space (which is what’s shown above).

But here’s what I’m really curious about: How do you feel about parking stackers? Would you live an apartment or condo where that was how you had to park your car? Or would it be a deal breaker? Please let us know in the comment section below.