studio dmau
urbanism with a focus on public space design, we design spaces and make films about places
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1733 Garageboxes

1733 Garageboxes

 

As part of our Schalkwijk Commons research, we looked in detail at the number of freestanding garage boxes in Schalkwijk Haarlem. Once the foundation of a car-oriented neighbourhood design the ubiquitous garage box offers incredible potential for step-by-step human-scale neighbourhood transformation. The garage box is much smaller in scale than other buildings in Schalkwijk but they are all situated at key locations, this is where new opportunities for workspaces, live-work units, artists studios, retail space, courtyard dwellings, self-build plots, could be realised. Their transformation into the above would bring a much-needed variety and diversity of building typology to the somewhat monofunctional residential postwar neighbourhood.