MIAMI BEACH, Florida - For her wedding, Nina Johnson worked through a checklist of locations : hotel ballrooms, restaurants, event halls .

In the end, she chose the most glamorous setting she could find - a parking garage.

“When we saw it, we were in total awe,” said Ms. Johnson, 26, an art gallery director. “It’s breathtaking.” Parking garages call to mind many words. (Rats. Beer cans. Unidentifiable smells.) Breathtaking is not usually among them.

Yet here in Miami Beach, bridal couples, bar mitzvah boys and charity- event hosts are flocking to what seems like the unimaginable marriage of high-end architecture and car storage .

The $65 million structure, 1111 Lincoln Road, appears to be an entirely new form: a piece of carchitecture that resembles a gigantic loft apartment, with exaggerated ceiling heights, wideopen 360-degree views and no exterior walls.

It is, in many ways, an ode to Miami’s flashy automobile culture. Rather than seeking to hide cars, it openly celebrates them.

While car enthusiasts rejoiced, something unexpected happened. Ordinary people came too ? with no intention of parking there.

“I went to the top and worked my way down,” said Peter Lampen, an architect who traveled from New Jersey to see the seven-story garage.

When Robert Wennett, a contemporary art collector, bought the property in 2005, he got a drab-looking bank office and a parking lot at the corner of two well-known boulevards, Lincoln and Alton Roads.

Quirky zoning regulations in the city, which is chronically short on parking, made it profitable to build a large garage .

Mr. Wennett, who admits that he hates most of the garages he has ever parked in, hired Herzog & de Meuron, a Swiss firm best known for transforming a power station into the Tate Modern gallery in London and designing the Olympic stadium in Beijing.

Mr. Wennett told the architects that he wanted something close to the grand hall of a train station ? big, airy, lightfilled and head-turning.

In a final flourish, the architects created a soaring top floor that doubles as an event space, with removable parking barriers.

It can be rented for about $12,000 to $15,000 a night.

“This is not a parking garage,” Mr. Wennett said. “It’s really a civic space.”

And a private home. Mr. Wennett built himself a large penthouse apartment on the roof.

The structure in Miami Beach “sets a new bar for what parking garages could and should be,” said Cathy Leff, the director of the Wolfsonian museum of design here.

Not all the reviews are fawning. Some wondered if Miami Beach, already legendary for its kitsch, should become known around the world for creating a thrilling place to park. “I guess this is what we bring to the table - a fancy parking garage,” said Lisa Gottlieb, a film professor .

But for the luxury-car set here, the garage is irresistible .

Douglas Sharon, a financial adviser who drives a gray Ferrari , said: “I wouldn’t even think of parking anywhere else when I’m downtown.”


By MICHAEL BARBARO