Reifenlager

3000Garages was a central component of Chemnitz’s application to become European Capital of Culture 2025. The project explored the community-building, creative, and cultural potential of garage complexes, which were collectively built during the socialist era and continue to shape the cityscape of Chemnitz and many post-socialist cities in Central and Eastern Europe to this day.

As part of an interdisciplinary summer school, local and international actors from the fields of art, architecture, urban planning, and cultural studies explored the diverse social practices surrounding Chemnitz’s garages. The focus was on concepts of sustainability, repair culture, and communal use that have been practiced since the GDR era—strategies that emerged from the conditions of scarcity at that time and can now be reinterpreted as possible responses to current challenges such as the climate crisis and resource scarcity.

Reifenlager emerged as a collective spatial practice based on collaborative construction and mutual learning. Existing infrastructures were jointly appropriated and further developed for long-term, self-organized use. The starting point was the lack of self-organized, non-commercial spaces for young people in Chemnitz. Together with the community around the Bagalut Customs workshop, a previously unused basement under the garage was conceived as a social, spatial, and technical space of possibility, whose existing resources could be activated and further developed.

During a five-day workshop, international students, local stakeholders, and the Bagalut community worked together in an open, iterative process of joint design, construction, and testing. The central raw material was the tires already present in the space. The workshop began with an introduction to the properties of the tires, how to work with them, and the safe use of the appropriate tools. This shared knowledge base made it possible to make design and functional decisions collectively and to continuously adapt them as the process progressed. Special thanks go to Jan Körbes from Refunc, who provided crucial support for this learning process with his extensive experience and knowledge.

In the basement of the Schrauberhalle, a drum & bass club was gradually created as a permanently usable infrastructure: with a dance floor, DJ booth, bar, cloakroom, and an outdoor area with a BBQ corner. Additional materials were collected from local scrap yards—including car mirrors, taillights, body parts, springs, and metals—which were integrated into the space as aesthetic and functional components. All of the technical equipment was also considered an integral part of the project: lighting, cabling, power distribution, and sound technology were planned, installed, and commissioned jointly. The ventilation system created by Bagalut Customs from used fans fits in with this logic of self-built, resource-saving technology.

Reifenlager went beyond a simple redesign. The process also included the preparatory and often invisible work of creating space: cleaning, making it accessible, securing it, and upgrading its infrastructure, as well as the programmatic conception and implementation of the opening night. This was organized together with young local DJs and marked the activation of the space as a collective unit of use.

The resulting space remains intact and continues to be used by Bagalut Customs as a party, work, and meeting place. In this way, rather than a temporary installation, a sustainable social and spatial infrastructure has been created—an example of commoning in action, material-based sustainability, and the ongoing appropriation of urban spaces in the spirit of #3000Garages.