The enigma of a parking lot accessible only by foot

For want only of a ramp to bring motorists to their lofty perch, a Farnborough 'car park' is a philosophical riddle in the sky

The “Get Carter” car park in Gateshead was celebrated for the brutalism of its architecture (Rex)

It was the 18th-century philosopher of radical empiricism David Hume who wrote, in A Treatise of Human Nature: “All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas; and when we have often employed any term, though without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a determinate idea annexed to it.”

One wonders, then, what he might have made of the application of the term and idea “car park” to the roof of a gym in Farnborough, where, we discover, there is access only on foot.

Certainly the urban planners in this unprepossessing Hampshire town may well have imagined that the term “car park” had the determinate idea “car” annexed to it, but it seems it was not to be.

As an intellect as great as Hume’s would probably not be needed to discern, they ran out of money to complete this particular civic work. For want only of a suitable ramp to bring the motorists to their lofty perch, this Farnborough car park is left as a philosophical riddle in the sky.

It could have been so different. Car parks can be challenging, even coruscating. The Parc des Celestins in Lyons is one such, the converted Art Deco Michigan Theatre in Detroit (where else?) another, while the “Get Carter” car park in Gateshead was celebrated for the brutalism both of its architecture and the scenes filmed there (it has been replaced by an unusually insipid design for a branch of Tesco Extra).

The car-park-without-cars hasn’t their presence, obviously, but it has acquired a global sense of enigma, and how many gym roofs can clam that?