ABOUT US
Located in a group of old factory buildings at Riesaer Straße 32 in Dresden Pieschen, Zentralwerk is reconstructed and run by the cooperative Zentralwerk Kultur- und Wohngenossenschaft Dresden eG based on a hereditary building lease granted by the foundation trias, which is the actual owner of the premises.
Zentralwerk e.V. cultural association
Established in 2005, we are a heterogeneous group of artists and art-related people who, acting as the cultural branch of the cooperative, have their main venue at Zentralwerk.
The association’s members offer a variety of professional profiles, bundling their artistic potential in interdisciplinary projects. Taking the industrial history of the place as a reference, we see ourselves as a cultural factory that is characterized by close and regular collaboration between the association’s members, by networking and exchange. This allows us to realize ambitious and socially valuable projects.
The cultural association Zentralwerk e.V. went through a number of transformations throughout its existence. Founded as friedrichstaTTpalast e.V. in a former bookbinding shop at Friedrichstraße 52 in Dresden, the first transformation took place when the Friedrichsstadtpalast theater in Berlin threatened to sue us for 250.000 € for copyright violation of their name. As we could not and did not want to pay, we decided to change the name to friedrichstadtZentral e.V. Over the years, friedrichstadtZentral grew to become a kind of artist collective, growing and blossoming with its annual art festival SICHTBETONUNG. When we had to move out of our premises at Friedrichstraße in 2012, we started to look for a new building to continue the fruitful combination of living and working together. We found it in Riesaer Straße in Pieschen in the northern part of the city – a group of buildings that had formerly housed a factory for optical lenses and subsequently a printing shop. So as to manage a project of such dimension – create living and working spaces for 40 members and studios for some 70 individuals and initiatives in a huge building abandoned a long time ago – we considered our legal form as an association not sufficient anymore and founded the Zentralwerk Culture and Housing cooperative. The latter takes care of the extensive reconstruction process and the administrative side, while the association is in charge of all cultural activities. To reflect the new situation, the association once more changed its name, this time to Zentralwerk e.V.