Thinking outside the box is something that young designers are always told to practice but a recent DesignBoom competition are designers to do much more than that. With the growing number of vehicles on the road, finding a parking spot has become almost impossible. The competition called upon the participants to come up with a creative solution to this and one of the 66 shortlisted entries drew inspiration from nature.

The Qashqai and the Giant Dandelion is a robotic parking construction that looks like a giant dandelion made from huge chunks of steel. Designed by Shao Yung Yeh from Taiwan, the dandelion is one of the shortlisted entries in the DesignBoom competition titled ‘Think Outside The Parking Box’. The Giant Dandelion holds several long stalks attached to a central base that rotates much like a flower swaying in the breeze. Each stalk has a levelled base on its tip large enough to hold a car. The tips light up in red or green, so users can tell if the stalk is occupied or not.

The design is certainly creative and fascinating but is not very cost-effective and the amount of power required is a sure waste of energy. Built on three different levels, the glow-in-the-dark stalks and the parked cars would remain exposed to nature and this would certainly not impress most people.

Via: DesignBoom