Our Bid Book for the European Capital of Culture outlined a large number of projects that will be implemented by 2025. These include the “3000 Garages” project. Before the project officially starts next year, the European Capital of Culture team would like to learn more about the Chemnitz garages as part of a scientific mapping project in cooperation with Munich University of Applied Sciences.
Chemnitz Garages - Open your eyes!
They are 3m x 6m x 2.80m stuck together in single or double rows, and many are grouped together in larger complexes. Some are built of corrugated iron, others of concrete slabs: garages. In all districts of the city of Chemnitz together, there are estimated to be between 3,000 and 30,000 garages. Many of them are simply used to park cars, while others are used for tinkering, hobbies, neighborhood chats or barbecues.
The garage complexes described are still part of the public space of the centers and peripheries, especially in eastern German cities. Originally created in this form in the post-Soviet states, garage yards still stretch across many cities in Europe today. They were once built communally and have long functioned as places of social encounter. Start-ups and crazy ideas were born in garages, and numerous bands originated here.
Garage yards as potential new places for improvisation and innovation have been an important part of Chemnitz’ application to become European Capital of Culture 2025. Together, all inhabitants of Chemnitzer should think about the future of the garage complexes and discuss how they could continue to be used – in their original function or, for example, as cultural meeting places for citizens:innen of the city. In view of the Capital of Culture Year 2025, the garage yards as urban-architectural objects and places of cultural and socio-historical significance as well as their uses will be recorded and analyzed in the summer of 2022. In a first step, the garages of Chemnitz were visited, measured and mapped by architecture students and their lecturers in the week from May 30 to June 3, 2022.
Are you interested in the project, want to find out more or get involved yourself? With pleasure! Contact us by:
E-Mail: 3000garagen@chemnitz2025.de
Postal address: Kulturhauptstadt Europas Chemnitz 2025 GmbH, Moritzstraße 20, 09111 Chemnitz
Here's how the inventory went:
What comes about when 110 architecture students from Munich visit Chemnitz for the first time and spend five days taking a close look at garage yards there? This much is certain: A lot. With clipboards, data entry sheets, name tags and 3D apps on their smart phones, they set out for the week of May 30 to June 3, 2022, under the direction of Prof. Dr. des. Luise Rellensmann and Dipl.-Ing. Architect Jens Casper, to visit over 150 Chemnitz garage facilities.
On site, the task was to map rows of garages, to record tthe various ypes and building fabric, and to discover and document architectural features. Whether in small complexes of five or six garages to the city’s largest yards, which hold more than 1,000 individual garages, the students got to know a variety of people and their stories in addition to the diversity of architectural construction. What in some cases began with initial skepticism or rejection, not infrequently ended in direct exchange to the point of opening the garage door and hearing the personal story behind it. These individual stories, as well as the architectural findings, 3D scans, video and sound recordings will be part of the upcoming projects within the Capital of Culture project “3,000 Garages”, which will be developed in the further course of the preparations together with artists, committed and interested people as well as Chemnitz cultural institutions.
At the end of the project week, the 55 groups of two each presented a short concise experience from their work in front of their fellow students and their new acquaintances from the garage yards and underlined it with a singe photo, video or audio recording. In the next step, the entire material will be viewed and evaluated during the current semester and processed together with the Capital of Culture team as a basis for further garage projects in Chemnitz .
Parallel to the mapping of the garages by students of the Munich University of Applied Sciences, another research measure took place during the project week. In the context of cultural management, Benjamin Gruner, a student at the International University in Dresden, carried out observations for his master’s thesis, which examines the potential of Chemnitz garages as places for cultural and social activities.
Monument preservation & the garage manifesto
The mapping is a collaborative building survey by the Department of Historic Preservation, Building in Existing Contexts and Building Surveying at the Munich University of Applied Sciences with the aim of making the GDR garages of the city of Chemnitz visible as a building cultural heritage.
The student survey action ties in with the 2017 project “The Garage Manifesto” in Cottbus, which was published as a book by Park Books in 2021.
Compared to the architectural drawings and photographs featured in the book, the students will work with digital surveying and representation methods in color during the Chemnitz workshop under the guidance of surveyors and architects Jonathan Banz (Munich University of Applied Sciences / jbks.ch) and Kristof Schlüßler (Munich University of Applied Sciences / jbks.ch). Based on a contemporary understanding of historic preservation, the project team does not understand “building survey” in purely technical terms, but rather takes a holistic approach. The goal of the five-day survey is to understand and document the garages as both structural constructions and social places. The team is looking forward to meeting and getting to know garage owners and users.
Questions?
Who maps the garages and when?
110 students of the Munich University of Applied Sciences under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Luise Rellensmann and in cooperation with the project team of the Capital of Culture Chemnitz2025 mapped the garages in the week from 30.05.22 – 03.06.2022 . Dipl.-Ing. Jens Casper supports the surveying team as an independent architect in the area of conceptual planning and creative processing of the research results.
Why map the garages?
The aim of the research is to map garages in the region in terms of historic preservation in order to preserve them in perspective and, if interested, to strengthen them in cooperation with the garage communities. For this purpose, the project team would like to get in contact with garage owners and users. The garages are a part of the cultural-historical, structural diversity of Chemnitz. The project team does not intend to expropriate or demolish the complexes and spaces – quite the opposite, it wants to explore and understand the social functions and potentials of the garage yards in the urban space.
Among other things, it addresses the following questions:
- Where in Chemnitz are the garages located and how did they develop or become what they are?
- What types of garages are there?
- What community models and complexes are there?
- How do the garages contribute to the structural diversity of Chemnitz?
- What social activities develop around the garage yards?
How will the garages be mapped?
The students use scientific methods to record the dimensions and design forms of the garage courtyards in terms of historic preservation.
Garages and yards were entered only in the exterior areas. No person entered, photographed, or otherwise recorded the interiors of garages without authorization or consent of the garage users.
What happens with the data and information?
The data will be collected as part of a research project on the history and typology of GDR garages by the Department of Building in Existing Contexts, Preservation of Historic Monuments and Building Surveys at the Munich University of Applied Sciences under the direction of Prof. Dr. Luise Rellensmann. The results of the survey week are also temporarily collected by the Kulturhauptstadt Chemnitz 2025 GmbH and used in the context of the Kulturhauptstadt project Chemnitz 2025 in accordance with data protection regulations. The data will not be used or passed on for private commercial purposes.
Can I get insight into the research results and information?
Yes, write a message to 3000garagen@chemnitz2025.de and we will add you to our news distribution list. Or send us a message to the following postal address: Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH, Moritzstraße 20, 09111 Chemnitz
What happens next?
After the intensive inventory of over 150 Chemnitz garage facilities, the recording sheets, videos, scans, 3D presentations, interviews and photos will be sifted, structured and evaluated in the coming weeks. At the same time, the newly established contacts with several interested citizens from the garage community will be maintained, expanded and followed up. Thus, the first overview of the Chemnitz garages and their users will be created. The material recorded and later processed by the students of the Munich University of Applied Sciences will be illuminated and creatively used in the course of further preparations for the Capital of Culture project “3,000 Garages”. Thus, an active, constantly growing collection of diverse records of Chemnitz garage landscapes, their users, of small stories and insights into everyday life, which together form an exciting and comprehensive narrative of Chemnitz, is being created.
Further links
- Yefimkina, Natalija: Garagenvolk, documentary film, Germany 2020
(link to the trailer) - Söder, Siegfried: Memories on 8 mm (Digitized Super 8 film), 2009
(link to the video) - Polt, Gerhard: The Garage, radio play, Germany 2000
- Ryazanov, Eldar: The Garage (Гapaж), feature film, USSR 1980
(link to the film)
Imprint
Garage Mapping is a teaching and research project under the direction of Prof. Dr. Luise Rellensmann (Department of Building in Existing Contexts, Preservation of Monuments and Building Surveys at Munich University of Applied Sciences) & Dipl.-Ing. Architect Jens Casper.
Augmented Reality Surveying (Technology): Jonathan Banz, Kristof Schüssler (Munich University of Applied Sciences / jbks.ch) and Lukas Strasser (student assistant / Munich University of Applied Sciences).
It is carried out in cooperation with the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH, represented by project manager Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka, production manager Ann-Kathrin Ntokalou and working student Benjamin Gruner.
Many thanks for the professional and friendly support of all employees of the City of Chemnitz, as well as the City Archive Chemnitz.
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