concrete time track

The Betonzeitschiene is an open-air museum in Dresden’s Johannstadt quarter devoted to large-panel construction. It stands on the edge of a former industrial wasteland, the site of the VEB Kommunales Plattenwerk, where prefabricated concrete panels for East German housing estates were once made. The museum occupied the entrance area of the works, beside the weigh-house and old storage yards, a few kilometres east of the city centre. The exhibits come from the demolished VEB Plattenwerk itself. Among them are the weigh-house, rails of the works railway, and a grass-covered gravel silo, together with tonnes of original materials: brick rubble, reinforcing mesh, panels, shaped blocks and ceramic tiles in fifteen colours. The display shows how industrialised building changed Dresden and Johannstadt, and fragments of sandstone recall the Carolahaus hospital that once stood on the site. Today the objects are kept on a nearby municipal plot, 200 metres west of the original location. The area was once the eastern edge of the seven-hectare works, which recycled thousands of tonnes of rubble from the 1945 air raids into its panels. After the factory closed in 1991 the site stood empty for over ten years until redevelopment began in 2001. A citizens’ group had already collected more than three thousand signatures to press for demolition, while the IG Platte association salvaged the museum pieces before they were lost.