The "Betonzeitschiene" is a "Gesellschaftkunstwerk" project on a large urban scale. In 2001 I was asked by a group of local citizens, from the city quarter of Johannstadt in Dresden, if I could develop an idea to help them make public the importance of protecting the ruins of the disused Industrial concrete panel factory in the heart of the quarter. The factory had built the surrounding "Plattenbauten" (Concrete slab housing) and had also provided the local people with jobs.
I suggested using the "waste", the broken slabs, the "left overs" from the factory to create a "concrete garden".
The site was urban "wasteland". The "Betonzeitschiene" was a new type of micromuseum, an urban implantation made from the fragments of the past, set into a story telling "Gestalt". Young and old enjoyed the result, I organised with the project "group" open air film evenings, architecture workshops and talks, music events and art exhibitions. It was a peoples micromuseum placed into the macromuseum of the city of Dresden.
