In Corona Time, contractor Julian van Dijk and his team thought out of the box. Or rather: in the garage box. His idea? You can live in those places.
Densifying the city without getting in the way of planning permission or parking standards sounds like a nice dream. It can be done with the BoxWonen Flex, the flex home made to replace a garage box. There is a lot of interest in it, says Van Dijk, of the Deventer contracting company VD Ontwerp en Realisatie B.V. "But before they sign, housing corporations want to be able to touch the house first."
Constructed from HSB
"It's nice that I am called "inventor" here," he laughs while showing the patent, which is in the name of him and Tom Oosterhuis of real estate agency MIQA. The patent describes a prefabricated basement unit topped with a demountable flex home, and has been granted until 2043.
The house consists of a basement box that is buried. In it are the bathroom and the bedroom. Daylight comes through a light box placed at the front, next to the front door. On top of the basement box, a home with living space and kitchen is mounted that is constructed of HSB. "If we have to, we can scale up production in our carpentry shop to several hundred a year. For small projects, we already assemble them here and transport them as a whole. For larger projects, we make packages here that can go on a truck. Then we assemble them on site."
Development
The development of the concept started at the end of corona time. "Then we thought: let's do something new. Housing associations asked us if they could do something with garage boxes. 'Can we live there?' But a garage box is very small to live in, so you would have to take to the air. But then you have to apply for an environmental permit and you don't want that. So you have to go into the ground. Once we decided that, we started designing."
Van Dijk is originally an urban planner and from that perspective he wants to do something about the housing shortage. Moreover, he likes doing new things. Because he owns VD Ontwerp en Realisatie, he gets the chance to do so. "Here at the company, they see it as my hobby project. But I like to take the freedom to develop something new. If the architect can't figure it out, I like to puzzle it out."
Densification and relocatability
The city has plenty of room for densification. Architect Reimar von Meding previously revealed on this platform that there was room within the city for The ten cities of Jetten. "Then you talk about topping up and so on," Van Dijk responds. "But that's difficult because of the municipality. That gets totally bogged down with the parking standards. And that's the beauty of flex housing, it already fits completely within the existing frameworks. And because it takes the place of a garage box, it's also not a welfare thing, but a change of function."
When developing the house, therefore, a lot of attention was paid to relocatability. "You really have to completely define how you can move it, where the rings are that you use to lift it. But also, for example, no pipes were allowed to run from the basement to the roof; that all stays separate and comes together in one junction box. Only the staircase breaks down when you take it apart. It shouldn't cost more than ten percent to take the house apart and put it back together."
Garage boxes in condominium ownership
Julian sees plenty of opportunities to place his homes. "We did some research. There are 900,000 corporation-owned garage boxes. The occupancy rate is about 70 percent, and about half of those are tenants. The rest are small businesses, people who want to tinker with their cars and the like. At least the garage stalls are not optimally run. And there is no rent protection, you can very easily evict people from a garage box. In Apeldoorn they had arranged within a month to get everyone out."
Touch
No wonder there is a lot of interest from corporations. In Deventer, the plans were at a very advanced stage. "We were already going to build, there was a declaration of intent. From the corporation there was even a project team on it. Until a new director came in and then it didn't happen."
A lot of other corporations already have locations, they have budgets for them, there are quotes and specifications. Everything is in the starting blocks. "We have a lot of pre-orders. All we need is a signature on the tender. Only they still want to touch it," says Van Dijk.
"And I really do understand that corporations don't want to be the guinea pig," he continues. "That's why we're going to put up a sample home now. The basement is already ready." That was made by Van den Berg Beton, with whom they developed the concept together for different soil types and quantities of groundwater. That sample house should be placed in Deventer in May of this year.
Care homes
Another project in Nijmegen already seems to be getting off the ground. "That is a private individual who rents a block of houses and on that plot there are also ten garage boxes. He has applied to the municipality for our flex housing as care housing. Only that permit has yet to come around. The consultation on that went well, but you never know with municipalities. They can suddenly ask for more research."
In Nijmegen, it's all about delivery. The customer himself has arranged a contractor who will place the houses. "Per house, it then averages around 65,000 euros. That is an average, because corner houses are more expensive than middle houses. If we take care of the placement, including the permits, they will cost about a ton and a half on average. By the way, we are going to guide that contractor on the first house. You just have to know how to do it right, and we have that knowledge in our heads."
The housing problem
Of course, VD Ontwerp en Realisatie put a lot of money into developing the concept and they would like to recoup that. But that's not the only reason for Julian van Dijk. "It involves tons of money, but other than that, it's not just a plan either. It would be great if it succeeds, then you do something about the housing problem. You now have so many garage boxes in which not even a car fits, maybe a Dafje with its mirrors folded. You can't do anything else with that, but you could live in that spot."
