For 10 years, Volkswagen builds the Phaeton in the transparent factory in Dresden. Here, the Blue Man is frowned upon, the workers wear white – and glide over fine parquet floor. The spare parts are delivered via tram. A visit.

Sometimes, you might hear almost a PIN fall. In the transparent factory in Dresden works so quietly and deliberately, that you rather what is in a living room as in an industrial plant. It would attract on the favorite slippers and sit with a cup of coffee on the sofa while three metres away cars. Boiler suits there is not in the factory: the workers wear white jumpsuits while they assemble the VW Phaeton, and run this over from Canadian Maple parquet. Even visitors wear white overalls. For the final quality control, when the cars with own tires on the ground roll, the parquet consists of the German fossil oak wood. That is namely darker, you will see Yes not immediately every rubber abrasion in the living room.

For nearly ten years, the VW factory is built Phaeton in the Gläsernern. The hoped-for best seller the smiling was never – so far, little more than 50,000 of Phaeton left the factory – but Volkswagen staunchly adheres to his prestige project. Around 56 vehicles incurred per working day in the light-flooded designer complex. There were a total 7500 most successful in 2010, while in Wolfsburg in a single day of 3700 and throughout the year 2011 expected 800,000 cars from the tape roll. The Phaeton can take so in each case, to be a fairly exclusive copy.

This applies especially to the Gläserne Manufaktur. The 8.3-hectare complex with 27,500 square meters window and the 55,000 sqm production area is not only a production site, but also a kind of live show, when the visitors step by step on two floors that Assembly can keep track of Phaeton. The production line is running on a house band that is just like the adjacent floor with parquet and moves forward in slow. An electric suspended takes the cars from one floor to another.

Production with 500 employees in two layers starts every day at six o’clock in the morning and ends at 11 pm. The highlight is the “marriage”, when engine are combined. These are robots in action and offer a fascinating drama: the car hangs on a conveyor belt, while popping up suddenly dumped robot arms with a stylish twist from the parquet floor and tighten the screws.

More than 80 percent of all German Phaeton buyers pick up their cars even in Dresden and visit the factory here. The complex, on the Volkswagen invested EUR 186 million a decade ago, encountered at that time at the Dresdeners not only love. The factory was built not in an industrial area, but in the heart of the city of Elbe and only ten minutes walk from the old. Environmentalists criticized the site directly to the “great garden” and feared truck columns, which would be wallowing through the city.

A petition for a citizens decision against the factory remained without success, but the protest without effect. So, for example, only the bodies of Phaeton from the VW plant in Zwickau directly by truck are delivered. The rest of the parts express trams from the Logistics Centre in the city of Dresden S to the factory. The two blue “CarGOTrams’ roll in a large courtyard, then back forklift and load from the boxes. Each CarGoTram can load 60 tons – as much as three truck – and commutes back and forth on the normal tram network in the city.

A Volkswagen Crystal Palace is unusual in many details. For the architect Gunter Henn, the aesthetic was so important that he brakes one not of filthy building wanted to leave. Tape or sticker on the glass facades, with which it wants to prevent bird collisions, were unthinkable for him. Therefore, nine floor columns with two speakers are available around the Gläserne Manufaktur. “The speakers emit digitized bird songs from nine types.” These acoustic signals mean ‚Achtung, here I am, this is my Revier. “This the brethren are scares and are looking for other spaces”, explained company spokesman Christian Haacke.

Aesthetic reasons below also quite opaque strips are located in the production area on the glass of some railings. Which are designed to prevent that driverless transport gondolas, however, encounter, whose Sensoren are irritated by transparent glass. Small crash barriers are actually intended for this purpose. But who wants to have been crash barriers in the living room?