SRI LANKA'S DOUBLE HELICAL IDEA FOR EASING THE PARKING CRUNCH

WHY USING SIMPLE DOUBLE-HELIX GEOMETRY TO SOLVE COLOMBO'S URBAN PARKING CRISIS COULDL BE THE WAY OUT

- By Rukshan Widyalankara, Chartered Architect

Colombo's daily strugglemarked by half a million vehicle entries and chronic parking shortages-is pushing Sri Lankan designers to radically rethink urban infrastructure.

The traditional multi-storey garage, consuming valuable space with sprawling two-way ramps, is now deemed obsolete. A local architectural concept, dubbed the rectangular double-helical car park (ParkDense), promises a smart, low-tech refinement. By physically separating traffic flow, this innovative geometry is expected to boost parking capacity by around 30% while dramatically cutting internal congestion, offering a sustainable model for high-density development.

Anyone who drives into central Colombo knows the routine: crawl through traffic, circle the block, watch for a gap on a busy kerb, and hope you don't end up with a parking ticket. On a typical weekday, more than half a million vehicles enter the city, yet only a small fraction of them can be accommodated in formal, off-street parking bays. At the same time, Sri Lanka's vehicle fleet keeps growing every year, adding further pressure on already strained streets and building plots.

As cities densify and land values rise, parking has quietly become one of the most difficult design problems in urban development. Apartments, hospitals, offices, hotels and shopping complexes are all expected and often required by regulation to provide adequate parking within tight sites. The traditional response has been to stack cars in multi-storey garages using simple two-way ramps. But these eat up valuable floor area, create internal congestion and still don't provide enough capacity in many locations.