Transparent Factory
The Transparent Factory in Dresden is an automobile manufacturer Volkswagen AG, which is operated by the "Automotive Dresden GmbH ". End of December 2011 were employed 515 people in the company.
Location
The Transparent Factory is located in the district of Dresden Seevorstadt-Ost/Großer garden near the baroque Dresden city center and forms the northwest corner of the Great Garden the Strasbourg court ( Stübelallee ). Immediately south-east front is the area of the Botanical Garden.
History
On the grounds of the Transparent Factory, the Municipal Exhibition grounds was with the ball home and the Civic Planetarium, later, the exhibition center Fucikplatz.
The plant was designed by the Munich architects Gunter Henn. In the planning phase of the construction of the factory was a matter of controversy, mainly because of the location on the edge of the Great Garden. Especially among environmentalists led the construction of strong protests. Primarily, the higher volume of traffic has been criticized on trucks that would deliver the new production plant in the city of Dresden. To mitigate the problem, suggested VW ago to transport the cargo instead of trucks with the cargo tram. With the exception of the bodies now all components with the CarGoTram from the VW logistics center at Dresden- Friedrichstadt station are brought to the factory.
Animal rights activists worried given the large glass facades to the birds, architects criticized especially the disharmony with the nearby baroque city center. In addition, the station had " the Strasbourg court " at the Dresden Park railway to be laid. The old station was demolished and a new one built, which was adapted to the design of the Transparent Factory. A citizens' initiative gathered 17,600 signatures against the construction of the VW factory at Great Garden - not enough to force a referendum. In mid-1999, the foundation stone was laid.
The transparent factory was put into operation on 19 March 2002. In addition to the production facilities is housed here also a gastronomic and cultural institution. Until 23 March 2002, the public was invited to the free tour. The production began even before the official opening. Ferdinand Piech as Chairman of Volkswagen AG and the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced on 11 December 2001, the start signal for the production. The company was built for the production of the VW Phaeton and offers customers and visitors an insight into the final assembly of the vehicles.
Because the VW subsidiary Bentley in Crewe (Great Britain) temporarily could not satisfy the high demand for their models, was assembled from mid 2005 until the end of 2006 here and the Continental Flying Spur. With the body production of the Bentley and Phaeton Volkswagen plant in Zwickau is commissioned. As the demand has slowed after the VW Phaeton in 2013, the production of the Bentley Flying Spur was again taken up in small numbers since the beginning of November 2013.
Effective 1 January 2012 Andreas Schmidt took over the location line of the automobile manufacturer. Schmidt was up to this time, the head of quality assurance in the vehicle plant in Zwickau and is responsible for parallel production and quality in the body shop for the Phaeton and Bentley in Zwickau. In this role, he will report to Hans -Joachim Rothenpieler, CEO of Volkswagen Sachsen and automotive Dresden GmbH.
Others
The foyer of the factory can be used in many ways. Thus, in 2002 because of flood damage at the Semperoper, the production of " Carmen - a version of " listed for a month at the Transparent Factory by Georges Bizet. Since 2005 regularly takes place a concert of the Moritzburg Festival in the foyer. In the Transparent Factory, there is also a restaurant and bar