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DIE GLÄSERNE MANUFAKTUR GERMANY, 1999–2001
Volkswagen’s (VW) Gläserne Manufaktur, or “Transparent Factory,” in Dresden was a public-private initiative intended to create jobs and return industry to a place of significance in an economically depressed East Germany following Germany’s reunification in 1989.24 The project was designed by Henn Architekten with engineers Leonhardt, Andrä and Partner in 2001. Architect Gunter Henn had previously completed VW Autostadt (2000) and factories for Skoda (1994–1996), and more recently BMW in Shenyang, China (2010). Their BMW project included an interior bridge for transporting car bodies above office spaces, similar to Zaha Hadid’s design for the BMW factory in Leipzig. VW’s 81,600-square-meter Transparent Factory embodies ideas of the “consumption of production” wherein manufacturing becomes a public spectacle, and that of factory tourism as a conscious effort to intensify a company’s branding and consumer experience.25 However, VW’s physical transparency broadened the scope of these ideas in its entirely new spatial and physical engagement with the street, exposing the manufacturing process to city dwellers. This dynamism is replicable in other urban contexts and informs a way forward for the progressive factories of the future. Henn’s concept of the form following the flow has traction here, in terms of the factory building itself being a mechanism rather than merely a wrapper.26 The visitor, upon entering the factory from the city center via an elevated pathway through the Baroque-era Strasburger Platz (formerly an exhibition ground) and crossing over a moat into an atrium space, encounters what appears to be a cultural complex rather than a factory. In addition to a normative factory program, the Transparent Factory features public amenities such as a restaurant, bar, and lounge, and public spaces that often feature performances and concerts, recalling and participating in Dresden’s strong musical heritage. VW’s primary goal in the use of these public-friendly spaces, however, is to entice higher-end consumers to view the factory as a destination in and of itself. The company wants people to not only purchase their automobiles, but to spend time watching them being made, and makes it possible for customers
to see their cars go through the final stages of assembly. Automotive tourism has been a standard practice since the 1950s, and has extended beyond the offering of public factory tours in recent decades to the advent of museums built adjacent to the production spaces. In opening its process to public consumption, VW has embraced a new phase of production economy, that of consumption. At first, local residents were opposed to the factory. To them, urban manufacturing harkened back to East German homogeneity and Saxony’s smoke-belching, pre-World War II industrial strength. Dresden city officials, on the other hand, viewed the idea of clean manufacturing in the heart of the city as a cultural amenity. Visually echoing the ideas espoused in the nearby Museum of Hygiene, the Transparent Factory’s highly choreographed assembly process, displayed through its glass facade — especially along the Stübelallee — not only shows off VW’s meticulous craftsmanship but inspires civic pride.27 Furthermore, Die Gläserne Manufaktur demonstrates how manufacturing can be reintegrated into cities, regardless of the area’s density. The three-to-five-story, L-shaped factory volume is a long-span precast reinforced concrete construction system built in modules. The 27,500-square-meter-facade is also constructed in modules of glass and steel fitted together in a unit, and then mounted together in a process that Henn compares to mass-produced automotive assembly.28 Rather than solid interior walls, steel cross beams and structural cables allow for openness not just within floors but between and across them, providing expansive interior views. The rectilinear buildings are punctured
Y Henn Architects, VW Factory, Dresden, 2001 X View within the auto storage “silo" X Cars on overhead carriers
with separate spherical volumes. One volume clad in aluminum houses the conference room and material selection spaces, and the other, more bulbous in shape, contains the lounges where customers can relax, be instructed on how the car operates, and then head down to the production spaces to meet their new purchase. A glass-clad, 15-story car-stacking garage rises behind the main production space, a clean-tech factory tower, similar to VW’s automated car storage in Wolfsburg. The production lines are visible throughout all the spaces of the factory, not only placing the manufacturing process under direct scrutiny, but satisfying people’s curiosity and fascination with how cars are made. This heightened transparency is also part of the production flow, allowing experts from the R&D branches to communicate with those fine-tuning the cars in a JIT and lean manufacturing methods.29 The manufacturing process actually begins in VW’s Mosel, Germany factory where the dirtier operations of automobile production, such as metal stamping and painting, are completed. These heavy auto parts, including the chassis, are quietly delivered from a logistics warehouse on the outskirts of Dresden by private blue CarGo Trams built by Schalke Steel Machines. Because the transport of parts takes place on public tracks, which are separate from yet integrated within the city’s rail system, the delivery
VERTICAL URBAN FACTORY THE CONTEMPORARY FACTORY THE FACTORY AS SPECTACLE
VERTICAL URBAN FACTORY THE CONTEMPORARY FACTORY THE FACTORY AS SPECTACLE
HENN ARCHITEKTEN, DRESDEN,
process, of one tram per hour, is unimpeded by regular traffic and in turn does not block city sidewalks. In the same way that elevated trains did for the cities in the early twentieth century, this transportation and delivery system holds great potential for expedited commerce in cities across a broad range of contexts. Workers receive the auto parts in the factory basement, sort them, and place them on a robotic magnetic floor guidance system to the assembly line. Skilled workers dressed in