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VW's new Dresden plant lets customers watch their cars getting made in a setting that's more atelier than assembly line.
By Phil Patton
December 2002
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This elevation shows, from left to right, the glass tower for automobile
storage, organically shaped public spaces, and the production hall.
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Volkswagen's new Glass Factory, in Dresden, allows visitors to see cars
being manufactured using new production technology such as the
"fish-scale" conveyer belt on which this chassis is mounted.
Top, courtesy Henn Architects & Engineers. Bottom, courtesy Volkswagen.
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Offsite:
Volkswagen Transparent Factory, www.glaeser nemanufaktur.de.
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Dresden still loves to think of itself as it was in its glory days, the
eighteenth century: a place of Gothic cathedrals, royal palaces, and grand
public squares. This is the city painted by Bernardo Bellotto, the Italian
expatriate whose canvases depicted bustling boulevards filled with
ornate carriages--royal coaches with wigged footmen; the elegant, open four-seaters
called phaetons.
Phaeton is the name of the new luxury model Volkswagen is making in Dresden.
The $190 million plant--a transparent structure called the Glass Factory--is
a visual celebration of modern manufacturing. The facility offers customers
a chance to see their vehicles being assembled. This is not a gritty, fiery
auto plant, like Ford's River Rouge or Toyota City, but in the words of
its architect, Gunter Henn, a "master craftsman's atelier," with
parquet floors. It will make about 20,000 Phaetons each year. The least
expensive model will sell for about $55,000, and those with the W-12 engine
for more than $100,000.
The Phaeton and the Glass Factory mark the highest ambitions of Ferdinand
Piech, who retired last spring as the Volkswagen group's boss. During his
tenure VW returned to prosperity, acquiring Bentley, Bugatti, and Lamborghini
and expanding the operations of Seat in Spain and Skoda in the Czech Republic.
But observers now wonder whether the Phaeton--a rich people's car--won't
confuse the image of Volkswagen--"the people's car"--and hurt
sales of Audi, their premium line.
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The factory's production hall (above) contains a slow-moving oval track
on which different lab-coated teams work at each stage of assembly.
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The room suspended from the ceiling (above) is for board meetings.
Top, courtesy Volkswagen. Others, courtesy Henn Architects & Engineers.
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At the Glass Factory making the car is part of selling it. One VW executive
calls the plant "a constant marketing event." The theory is that
witnessing a car's assembly will create what Piech has called "an emotional
bond between owner and vehicle." By making the process visible, adds
VW board manager Dr. Folker Weissgerber, "we wanted to present the
fascination of technology as a 'staging' for production, and as an attraction
for customers and visitors. To compete with Mercedes and BMW, it's not enough
just to build a perfect car. There must be something else to make up people's
minds."
Other companies are reshaping factories as showcases for customers. BMW
has just hired Zaha Hadid to design a showcase factory in Leipzig, where
assembly lines will snake around offices, intermingling blue- and white-collar
work. Ford is rehabilitating the River Rouge plant, birthplace of automobile
mass production, as a "clean and green" showcase, designed by
William McDonough. But no one has taken the process as far as VW. Located
in the middle of Dresden, the new factory borders the Great Garden, a park
and botanical garden that began as the royal hunting ground 300 years ago.
It's as if someone had built a factory adjacent to Central Park.
Surrounded by gardens and ponds, the factory occupies a spot where one would
perhaps expect a cathedral. But instead of a church steeple there is a 130-foot
glass tower where finished cars are stored. Inside, the glassy rectilinear
forms of the assembly area contrast with the biomorphic shapes of the public
spaces: a cylindrical boardroom suspended from the ceiling, a restaurant
located on a curved balcony, a funnel-shaped reception area. The proportions
of the factory floor recall Walter Gropius's original Bauhaus.
In German the complex is called Die Gläsernen Manufaktur. The word
manufaktur means something more than factory; it suggests a combination
of high technology and craftsmanship, much like the porcelain china that
made the city famous. The eighteenth-century equivalent of silicon, porcelain
was the foundation of Dresden's prosperity. (The Meissen china works are
still a major tourist draw.) When plans for the Glass Factory were first
announced, locals were appalled at the idea of a factory downtown. But there
are no smokestacks or railcars; trolleys ("Car-Go-Trams") carry
parts on the tracks of the city transit system from warehouses in a nearby
suburb. Since opening in March the place has become a tourist destination.
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In this site plan (above) for the Glass Factory--which is located in the
northwest corner of Dresden's Great Garden--the glass tower is visible
near the bottom and the production hall runs across the top of the
structure.
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Among the buildings in the surrounding neighborhood are the landmark
Frauenkirche (above, foreground)--a church built in 1743 by George
Baehr, destroyed by bombs in 1945, and currently under
reconstruction--and the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (above,
background), with its notorious "Lemon Squeezer" dome.
Top, courtesy Henn Architects & Engineers. Others, courtesy Volkswagen.
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VW offers a variety of hotel and other discounts to potential customers
who travel to Dresden to visit the factory. Strolling through gardens and
around ponds, visitors arrive in a librarylike lounge. Then they're taken
to a glorified sales area called the Konfigurator ("configurator"),
where they experiment with custom versions of the car. Options--such as
paint color, leather, and wood--appear on huge plasma display screens. At
one terminal customers choose a color for the car and a backdrop--Stonehenge,
say, or the Guggenheim Bilbao--have their pictures taken, and print out
an image of themselves standing beside the Phaeton. Engines and chassis
are on display. There's even a simulator where people can test-drive the
car. (The Phaeton does not go on sale in the United States until mid-2003,
when "configuration" computers will be installed at dealerships.)
Glass bridges offer views of the work floor. It is a quiet factory--no
stamping or hammering, hissing or buzzing. "There are only three robots
in the whole factory," guide Jens Ludwig says. "We call them Robbies."
Workers wear white gloves, aprons, and lab coats. No buttons, watches, chains,
or other metal objects are allowed, because they might damage body surfaces.
Workers use rechargeable portable electric tools. There is no assembly line
or conveyor belt. Horseshoe-shaped devices hanging from ceiling tracks bear
bodies along; chassis proceed across the parquet floor on pallets.
These "slat belts"--or in VW corporate speak, "driverless
transportation systems"--are followed by "goods baskets"
holding parts. The floor is lit by theatrical spots perched high above
the workers. There is an unhurried pace to the process, an impression abetted
by the lack of clamor.
The body and chassis meet at a point the workers call the wedding, or Hochzeit.
A sense of ritualized assembly is part of VW lore; this term has been used
at the Wolfsburg factory as far back as the 1950s. The vehicles are carefully
tested, their headlights adjusted, and steering fine-tuned. Then they
pass through a brightly lit tunnel for paint inspections. Despite the immaculate
ceremony, VW has not found a magic way to eliminate welding chassis, stamping
body panels, or polishing out rough spots in the metal. The trams carry
only some of the parts. Bodies arrive preassembled by truck from a factory
in Mosel, about 100 miles away; engines come from a plant in Salzgitter.
And welding occurs in the factory's basement. Like most contemporary cars,
the Phaeton is made of modules--subunits such as dashboards or HVAC systems.
The further one moves down the supply chain, the lower the wages; low operating
costs were one attraction of the Dresden location. Eastern workers earn
only about two-thirds as much as those in the West. The government of Saxony
provided substantial subsidies.
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Public spaces include the curved balcony of the Lesage restaurant
(above) and a futuristic sphere (below) that houses multimedia stations.
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Top, courtesy Henn Architects & Engineers. Bottom, courtesy Volkswagen.
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Showing the automaking process evokes the tradition of Rolls Royce or Bentley,
who have long invited customers to watch British craftsmen apply wood and
leather to vehicles. Mercedes has just introduced the Maybach, a superluxury
car aimed to compete with Rolls, and will invite customers to watch the
cars being built near Stuttgart. But picking up your car at the factory
is a German tradition. The original plan for Hitler's Volkswagen was for
buyers to pick up cars at the factory in what was then called Strength Through
Joy city. Today in Wolfsburg, at the Autostadt theme park (see "Meet
the Beetles," November 2000), 40 percent of VW buyers pick up cars
they have purchased previously at local dealers. Audi's museum and customer
center in Ingolstadt is equally popular. Porsche has a similar facility.
At the Glass Factory, the ceremonial handing over of keys takes place in
a room filled with white light. A door opens, and the completed car
rolls down a ramp, through a garden, and out onto the street.
Henn also designed both Autostadt and Ingolstadt. His ambitions for these
buildings are high; he sees them as pedagogical places. The Glass Factory,
which Henn at first liked to call the "crystal factory,"
uses the transparency of glass as a metaphor for openness and cleanliness.
But it also reflects the city around it literally, mirroring the Museum
of Hygiene across the street, a strange institution originally funded by
the maker of the disinfectant Odol. Another side of the factory faces blocks
of former East German worker housing.
Of all his VW projects, Henn holds the Glass Factory closest to his heart.
He was born in Dresden and has filled the factory with local references.
On display in the lobby is a 1930s car once owned by the emperor Haile Selassie
with a body by the renowned Dresden coach-maker Glaeser--making a rolling
pun on Gläsernen Manufaktur. Near the restaurant Henn installed an
80-foot-wide sphere filled with high-tech equipment and Internet connections.
This "media sphere" echoes the former presence of a famous local
landmark called the Kugelhaus, a spherical structure that stood there from
1928 until the Third Reich. It was the work of Peter Birkenholz, a Jewish
architect; the Nazis tore it down as "decadent."
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