sunderland
Rising out of Galley’s Gill Ravine
Sundersea takes the cars out of the city
the sea into the sky

Winner, Best New Car Park, British Parking Awards, 2023
Winner, Light & Surface Exterior, Surface Design Awards, 2024
Shortlisted, Infrastructure and Transport, AJ Awards, 2024

Sundersea is a state-of-the-art multi storey carpark in Sunderland. Being an intrinsic part of Sunderland’s new urban quarter, its impact extends beyond providing a sustainable parking solution; it will facilitate the creation of amenities, a pedestrian priority zone, and congestion reduction. Open 24 hours, the multistorey car park provides 657 spaces, including 49 accessible spaces, 115 EV spaces, and motorcycle and cycle parking.

Tonkin Liu became involved in the project by winning the art competition organised by arts consultant Working Parts. The brief called for an extensive artwork to enclose the 100-meter-long by 16-meter-tall car park. Before the competition, the existing planning permission entailed an in-situ concrete car park.

Tonkin Liu worked with Sunderland City Council to reconceive the car park as a symbolic flagship, whose early arrival in the development would herald the growth ambition of Riverside Sunderland. The practice collaborated with a team of consultants to transform the car park into a placemaking project.

Tonkin Liu employed its nature-focused storytelling design process to infuse Sunderland with a distinctive new cultural identity that reconnects people with the natural world. Inspiration has drawn from the history of Sunderland’s affinity with the sea, being once the world’s largest shipbuilding centre, an affinity recently rekindled by Sunderland’s role as a major gateway to offshore wind farms and shaping its green future. The artwork reimagines the sea as Sunderland’s defining characteristic, evoking a 100-metre-long living sea brought to life with the movement of cars within.

The artwork gains a presence from its singularity, whilst perforate patterns give it a delicacy. Perforations in rippling patterns of diminishing perspective create an optical illusion of three-dimensionality, distance, and dynamism, achieved using a flat, reflective aluminium surface, like painting by number, lending hierarchy to the perforated pattern through the height of the car park floors. The perforated screens provide shading and airflow, and their patterns are refined to meet the volume calculated for required airflow for passive and natural ventilation across the car parking areas.

Internally, the perforation casts dappled sunlight in wave patterns over parked cars. Looking out from the carpark, the perforated screen pixelates the view over Sunderland, transforming the cityscape into abstract painting-by-numbers images.

The poetic intention and the pragmatic need are brought together as the car park interacts with nature, the changing seasons, the light of the day, and the durable and robust part it plays for the city. Sundersea becomes a performative part of Sunderland, fulfilling a role in infrastructure that captures the city's imagination.

During the day, the 3-millimetre-thick reflective anodised aluminium sheet catches the sky's changing colour, dynamically shifting from grey to blue to orange, lending an ethereal quality to the building.

At night, external lighting brings colour and movement to the sea. Blue and green light washes over the surface as warmer internal lighting to the car park level is triggered by movement, whilst localised sensor-activated internal lighting comes on as and when cars enter different levels and zones. Viewed from the outside, the changing lights become part of the external spectacle. The façade is further animated when pairs of headlights and taillights move through the carpark, like creatures swarming in the depths of the glowing sea.

Cores at both ends of the carpark bring life in the form of green walls , holding 50,000 plants specifically chosen to work with the local climate and bring biodiversity to the area. A rainwater harvesting system is housed on the car-free roof. The collected water is used to water the green walls and irrigate the new surrounding landscaped areas.

Tonkin Liu's nature-focused design process engages regenerative principles at all stages of the design. It brings nature to the fore, linking placemaking in tandem with the delivery of innovative constructional techniques.

“The stunning living wall and Sundersea artwork have provided a new, welcoming gateway to the city which perfectly captures our ambition to transform Sunderland into a progressive, 21st-century city.”

- Cllr Michael Mordey, leader of Sunderland City Council