Prompted by an article forwarded to me today, in Autocar, where BMW were reported as speculating (as always) on the future shape (and even future of) the car dealership, I remembered the day before news about Shanghai studio Neri&Hu’s project, converting an old missile factory in Beijing into an office…

…and car repair garage.

The Garage is “a mechanics workshop catering to Beijing’s some 7 million vehicles is flanked by offices and a cafe” and the design team’s aim to recapture “the ‘allure and magic’ once associated with with the car industry.”

Their aim was to challenge the ‘vulgar typology’ of the car garage, to “inject a sense of warmth into an industrial context, and to portray the seductive side of the ubiquitous modern machine”

Which, as ambition’s go, is pretty admirable.

The result, while challenging, is remarkable and perhaps a glimpse of an alternative future for the dealership model; one that takes the challenges the industry faces head on with bold design thinking.