DRESDEN’S PALACE OF DREAMS

  

Proudly strutting high over the winding edges of the Elben river, and clearly aware of its old city and the exclusive collection of architectural pearls, Dresden is commonly considered to be a somewhat conservative urban society. With this in mind, it is surprising to find that one of today’s most aggressive and provocative architect offices was ever given permission to build a cinema complex on the east side of the city centre. However, regardless of the unique qualities in Dresden’s old cultural heritage, the traces of DDR’s discount modernism are quite conspicuous on the building plots made vacant by the allied carpet bombing of the city in January 1945. Thus, a single, modern cocktail on a difficult site facing the heavily trafficked Skt. Petersburgerstrasse poses no serious threat to the city’s fine reputation.
The cinema’s architect, the Austrian office Coop Himmelb(l)au, is known to many for their avant garde projects since 1968, but despite their indisputable talent and perseverance, they have realized only a few, small building projects, especially in Vienna. Their greatest artistic work is still the glass wing over a law office on top of a venerable city building on Falkenstrasse (1990  

 

 according to their own allegations consists of working with closed eyes and a soft-leaded pencil and sketching their way to a so-called "psychogram", where the project’s functional and expressive aspects are synthesized in an artistic whole. Despite this mystifying creative process, the UFA-cinema “Palace” can be described in relatively simple, objective terms: Eight cinemas are placed in pairs on four stories in an in-situ concrete box, which due to its choice of heavy materials screens both the cinemagoer as well as the glass foyer from the traffic noise of the adjacent ring road. Starting from the triangular shape of the site, the architects exaggerated the triangular form idiom by also pointing the southern corner of the cinema floor plans, while steeply sloping the facade outward like the prow of a ship - or a butcher knife. Behind the concrete clump, they gave the foyer the form of a leaning rock crystal, which seems to rest  against - and contradict, the closed clump of cinema theatres.

The crystal is many‑faceted and toward south equipped with exterior solar screening, On the entrance level under the cinemas, tickets and popcorn is sold from a separate, low-ceilinged space, whereas the high foyer space is not noticeably disturbed by the unpleasant smell of junk food. Primarily, the five story foyer stands out as an architectural metaphor for openness - both in relation to the exterior space as well as its own soaring stairways and footbridges, which are reminiscent of Piranesi’s spatial fantasies 

 

As true offspring of German expressionism, Coop Himmelb(l)au has a tendency to cultivate form for the sake of expression. The in-situ concrete elevator tower in the glass foyer bends back and forth as it rises upwards, despite the fact that the elevator car inside runs vertically up and down in its shaft just like any other elevator. In a similar fashion, on the ground floor of the foyer, the architects placed an angular set piece to ease the transition to the more closed cinema clump while also accentuating the slope of the oblique glass crystal.
In the centre of the high foyer space, hung by steel wires, there is a circular seating group, a so-called “heavenly bar” where the cinemagoers can experience the sense of floating in the open space  while waiting for the show to begin. In addition to the foyer’s inner spatial experience, there is also the circadian rhythm from the sleepy morning atmosphere that slowly accelerates during the afternoon to the evening with its glowing intensity and activity 

 

Coop Himmelb(l)au has never lifted a finger to relate to the context of the surrounding buildings: “We do not work against the old structure in order to destroy it. We work to create new spaces, where and when possible. If an old structure prevents us from creating open space, we destroy it.” In Dresden this lack of veneration is practically transformed to an advantage, in that the faceted form and the muster of material at the UFA-Kinopalats, with luck, can play on its extremely trivial background of apartment buildings and the cylindrical Rundkino from the DDR-years. At the same time, there is a fine agreement between the youthful exercises with skateboards and mountain bikes on the adjacent square, and the cinema’s tempting offer of a place to rest and relax between the physical activities inside 

 

Seen as a whole, the building’s detailing is not better than one could expect in a function as profane as a cinema. The robust and characterful interplay of materials often appears to be studied, with slabs of galvanized grates as a solid yet delicate device to screen-off the fire stairs and escape routes on the east and north sides of the building. With the edges of the stairs covered with stainless-steel panels, a rich play of reflections and shadows occurs. Toward south, the building loads are supported by oblique steel pips, while the west side is dominated by steel sections and aluminum window mullions.
There is quite a bit of affectation in Coop Himmelb(l)au’s statement, when the office flirts with the notion of never working additive with architecture.
However, the cinema complex in Dresden is logically analysed, a clear example of additive architecture, which in its first concept was only a bit more dramatic than the comparatively “rational” structure that has resulted. An addition with dramatic accentuations, where concrete meets steel and glass 

 

Nevertheless, one can clearly ascertain that almost all architectural experience would dehydrate to pure pietism if rational or minimalist modernism was the only available alternative today. Seen in this light, we should welcome the different, more expressive and anarchistic form idioms like Coop Himmelb(l)au’s as life-giving exceptions to the conform world of modern building.
 
Flemming Skude
 
Facts:
The UFA-Palace is an annex to the Rundkino and has eight theatres with a total of 2,700 seats. Built: 1993-98.
 
Source:
Interview with Wolf D. Prix in Newsline magazine, 1990