DHZ Werkplaats: An exploration of the archive of a free space in Rotterdam

During my graduation in 2025, I dived into the archive of the Doe-Het-Zelf Werkplaats, a bike workshop run by volunteers in Rotterdam where people can come and fix their bike for free. This space operates with an ethos of care and reciprocity. For a few months, I researched the structures that allowed this space to regenerate, with a close look at how they archive their practice.

As a maker interested in anarchism, I was curious to investigate how this space, which performs solidarity, relatively outside of the capitalist system, operated for so long (more that 10 years). By publishing my research, I was eager to share my experiences to an audience who doesn’t know about this kind of place, and who might have prejudices over anarchism in general.

After looking at their multi-layered archive, which included flyers, books, zines and web blog-posts, I wrote a publication built upon an essay, reflections about my time there, answers from the volunteers to those, and a picture collection documenting traces of the past I could physically find in the space. This publication was designed with a loose binding, to emulate the diversity and fluidity of the space’s archive, so the reader could discover it at their own pace, as if they were opening an old family picture’s box.

The publication was designed with fonts from the Collletttivo type-foundry, an Italian collective that releases open-source typefaces