Residential Driveway Project

Grey, split by a fence, backed by planting

Two cars. One fence between them. No extra runoff was the ask for this residential driveway: parking at the front of a pair of contemporary homes, with nothing draining onto the street. We poured two permeable parking pads side by side, one Ultracon slab per home, plain grey.

The fence between them is black timber. Grey sat right against it, and against the dark cladding on the houses behind, without arguing with either. A pad that keeps quiet lets the fence and the facades do the work, and the whole frontage reads as finished rather than fixed up afterward.

Each pad went down in one pour. No joints, so nothing to rock loose or sink where a paver would. Tussock grasses and mulched beds line both sides of each pad, and the concrete stops at the mulch, not a stormwater grate, so the parking sits inside the garden instead of cutting across it. That's also why the upkeep is light: sweep it, don't dig it up.

Where the water goes matters more than how it looks. Rain goes straight through the surface, not sideways across the footpath, and there's no puddle waiting when you step out of the car after a downpour. Less water reaches the street drain, and the block handles its own rain before it becomes somebody else's problem. Every driveway we design starts with a look at the actual site.