Imagine, for a second, youâre a billionaire who loves cars, and youâve bought up a collection of vintage or limited-edition Ferraris, Lamborghinis and maybe the odd Bugatti or McLaren. But where are you going to put them all? It is, perhaps, the ultimate #richpeopleproblem.
You canât park them in the street, obviously. Your garage is already full â and all the cars are so tightly packed that itâs hard to really show them off when your friends come over. Until recently the only solution was to store them in a secure garage or warehouse nearby.
But now architects are creating specially designed âcar art galleriesâ, âcar museumsâ, and houses and apartment towers built around cars so you can drive your $135m (£115m) 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé into the dining room or park it next to your indoor pool.
âYou wouldnât keep a Rothko in the basement under the stairs â youâd hang it in pride of place with good lighting and space around it,â says Jonathan Clark, the founder of Garage Deluxe, an architecture practice that âdesign[s] luxury spaces for luxury carsâ.
âWe view cars as works of art in their own right, and believe they should be given as much thought as artworks,â Clark says. âBut luxury car collections are [sometimes] crammed in leaky old barns. They should be kept in an environment where you can show them at their best.â
Clark, who also runs the more traditional practice Jonathan Clark Architects, said he founded Garage Deluxe to allow him to combine his two greatest passions: architecture and cars. He personally owns âa couple of Porsches, a Ferrari and an Alfa Romeoâ, which he says helps him connect with his car-loving billionaire customers. âIt is about creating spaces for beautiful cars to sit in a gallery-like environment.â
Money, Clark says, is often of no concern to his clients which is fortunate as the cost of even a small car gallery starts âfrom £2m upâ. Their privacy, however, is a paramount concern and Clark has signed gagging clauses with most clients meaning he canât provide many details of projects he has worked on. âI went into a tiny bit of detail about one client with somebody else who wasnât a client, but heâs in that world and he knew exactly who it was, just from me giving this tiny little snippet,â he says.
So Clark mostly only talks about the projects he has bid for but lost out on to a rival. The most painful one that got away was an âunderground car cathedralâ for a billionaire with 25 cars in a field next door to his house in France. âHe wanted to do it in such a way that no one would really know theyâre there,â Clark says. âWe designed this double-height space with a mezzanine so you could chill out and entertain. What better way to look at your cars than from above?â
Clark designed the almost 3,000sqm space so the cars can be driven down a ramp and circle down into the basement. âIt was very Thunderbirds,â he says. âIt would have been a wonderful project to work on. It was quite minimalist, in the way that most art galleries are quite minimalist because you want to create a beautiful environment, but at the same time you donât want to necessarily compete with whatâs going in there.â
A British project Clark has in the works is a car display room next to a clientâs underground swimming pool, so that he can look at his Ferrari F40 while doing his morning laps. âI imagine itâs quite good for entertaining and parties and things like that. Itâs a different way of presenting a car.â
âThereâs another one weâre looking at where you could be swimming in your swimming pool ⦠[dive] down under the water and youâve got a glass screen [so] you can see through to where the cars are under the pool.â
The garages also often include turntables, workshops, wash bays and space for teams of workers employed to maintain the collection â âpeople who are employed to look after the car collectionâ, Clark says. âIf youâve got 25 cars, you canât just leave them â you need somebody turning them over taking them out for a little spin.â