Rundkino Dresden
The Rundkino Dresden has been a striking building in Dresden since 1972 . It is located on Prager Straße and, as a rotunda, has a diameter of 50 meters and a height of 20 meters.
It is the third cylindrical building in the GDR and the first of its kind for the public. Due to its architecture and the large hall with 898 seats, the circular cinema is one of the most important buildings of post-war modernism in Dresden. The Great Hall has the largest cinema screen in Saxony. Before the lecture center opened, it was also used by the Technical University of Dresden as a lecture hall for large events.
In addition to a six-screen cinema, the building also houses a puppet theater belonging to the Young Generation Theater .
history
Planning and construction
A competition was announced in 1966 for the design of the cinema. The building should contrast with the cuboid buildings in the area. A design with curved shapes by Heinz Kästner, Peter Thieme and Wilfried Irmier and the design with a round floor plan by Manfred Fasold and Winfried Sziegoleit were shortlisted . The latter was ultimately implemented as one of the two second places.
architecture
The round cinema was designed by the architects Manfred Fasold and Winfried Sziegoleit, the executing architects were Gerhard Landgraf, Waltraud Heischkel and Theo Wagenführ (interior design).
The architecture of the building resembles a wastepaper basket ; it has a diameter of 50 meters and a height of 20 meters. The ground floor is designed with glass from the outside, framed by polished black natural stone . Above it is a protruding segment, which is decorated with steel frame ornaments by the Dresden graphic artist Gerhard Papstein. The somewhat narrower main cylinder, which houses the Great Hall, is clad with enamelled aluminum panels in a vertical arrangement.
The cylinder was made of in-situ concrete in slipforms built. The complicated roof construction was realized by the Bauakademie Berlin . It is a rope net suspension construction with a compression and tension ring made of 96 radially tensioned steel ropes. Precast concrete elements were hung into these and grouted with in-situ concrete. The roof structure is accessible.
Construction work
After the first development work, the foundation stone was laid on October 22, 1969. The project planning took place in the VEB Baukombinat Dresden, the main contractor was the VEB BMK Coal and Energy . The opening took place on October 7, 1972 on the occasion of the Republic Day. The film theater on Prager Straße served as the “premiere theater for the Dresden district”. In the end, the total costs for the construction after multiple increases were 14.8 million GDR marks. The large movie theater on the first floor offered space for 1018 visitors. There was also a smaller studio cinema with 132 seats on the ground floor.
Interior
Theo Wagenführ designed the interior.
Before the renovation in the early 1990s, there was a cloakroom, the ticket office and a cinema on the ground floor. The walls are covered with light Bulgarian sandstone ; the pillars are enclosed with stainless steel .
A wide, freely swinging straight staircase leads to the upper floor, which houses the Great Hall. The ceiling of the Great Hall is lined with wooden elements in which there are 638 lamps. Originally, the interior was equipped with steel pipes and red covers. The canvas is concave , 9.2 meters high and 21 meters wide. Four narrow, curved stairs lead to the rear of the cloakroom and separate exits. There is also another foyer on the upper floor, which was previously furnished with black leather armchairs. A changing exhibition was also set up there. Later offices were built on the first floor.
Operation and technology
The cinema was equipped with the technology for playing 70 mm large format films . The building, especially the Great Hall, was also used for rock and pop concerts , senior and children's events as well as youth consecrations and for events of the Dixieland Festival . In the 1980s, the Great Hall was one of the few cinemas in the GDR to be equipped with a Dolby stereo system. The cinema was taken over by UFA in 1991 .
During renovation work after German reunification , the former storage rooms in the basement were converted into additional cinemas until 1992. In addition to the large hall 1 on the upper floor and hall 2 (studio cinema) on the ground floor, the round cinema had five smaller halls ( hall 3–7 ) in the basement with seating capacities between 96 and 332. Therefore, the halls in the neighboring new Ufa-Kristallpalast , which opened on March 26, 1998 and was operated jointly with the Rundkino, initially numbers 8 to 15.
From 1995 the Wöhrl Plaza complex of Tetris Grundbesitz GmbH & Co KG from Reichenschwand was built between the round cinema and Prager Straße . This partially surrounds the round cinema and obscures the view from Prager Straße, which puts the round cinema in a backyard-like location. Still, it was until 1997 one of the most congested best cinemas in Germany because it was the only movie theater in Dresden, for the broadcast of Hollywood - Blockbuster was used.
A short time later, extensive renovation of the circular cinema began. The great hall got a red wall covering. The technical systems were modernized. The halls in the basement were furnished with new armchairs. The studio stage was made available to the puppet theater free of charge. Furthermore moved Pizza Hut one in the southern part of the foyer.
Bankruptcies and new beginnings
After three new multiplex cinemas with a total of over 6000 seats opened in Dresden in 1997 and 2000 ( UCI-Kinowelt , Bofimax (later Metropolis, closed since December 30, 2009) and Cinemaxx ), the number of visitors in the round cinema and in the Kristallpalast fell enormously.
The basement floors were badly damaged in the flood in August 2002 , so that the basement of the round cinema could no longer be used for cinema operations. In October 2002 the operating company, UFA Theater GmbH & CO KG, went into bankruptcy . On April 1, 2003, the Lübeck cinema group Kieft & Kieft ( Cinestar ) took over the operation of a large part of the UFA cinemas, including the Kristallpalast. Due to a contractual clause, no more films were allowed to be shown in the round cinema from this point on, in order to avoid competition with the Kristallpalast. Since then, the rundkino_revisited initiative , from which the rundkino dresden e. V. emerged for the preservation of the building and its further use. In October 2003 the circular cinema was placed under monument protection. In May 2004 the owner company of the round cinema, UFA Theater AG, also had to file for bankruptcy. On September 30, 2004, the operators of the Kristallpalast (the insolvent UFA Theater GmbH & CO KG and Kieft & Kieft, who had taken over the management of the cinema) terminated the contracts for the operation of the Kristallpalast due to disputes with the owner of the Kristallpalast property . As a result, the ban on operating the round cinema fell away.
In February 2007 the building was bought by Tetris Grundbesitz GmbH & Co. KG, which already belongs to the Wöhrl Plaza complex next door. On March 29, 2007, game operations in the large hall of the round cinema were resumed as a 3D cinema under the name Cinemagnum by the operator Fantasia Film. In 2008, the four halls in the basement, damaged by the floods in 2002, were renovated for 2.5 million euros and put back into operation on November 6th. A total of 1400 seats are available in the round cinema, in which not only 3D films but also 2D films are shown. Since October 2011 the round cinema has belonged to Cineplex , which according to its own information is the second largest cinema chain in Germany.
Web links
- Website of the club rundkino dresden e. V.
- Cineplex cinema website
- The round cinema at das-neue-dresden.de
- Detailed information about the condition of the round cinema (PDF file; 1.27 MB)
- Photo documentation of the cinema
Individual evidence
- ↑ situation. Rundkino dresden e. V., accessed February 5, 2012 .
- ↑ Cineplex Rundkino - your cinema in Dresden. cineplex.de, accessed on May 10, 2016 . - 9 m high × 21 m wide.
- ↑ Rundkino: Original solitaire - parked in the backyard. das-neue-dresden.de, accessed on February 5, 2012 .
- ↑ a b story. Rundkino dresden e. V., accessed February 5, 2012 .
- ↑ Why the “Metropolis” has to close. sz-online.de, December 4, 2009, accessed on February 5, 2012 .
- ↑ Ufa cinemas plunge into bankruptcy. spiegel-online.de, October 7, 2002, accessed on February 5, 2012 .
- ↑ Lübeck save Ufa cinemas. Abendblatt.de, February 13, 2003, accessed on February 5, 2012 .
- ↑ Monument protection. Rundkino dresden e. V., accessed February 5, 2012 .
- ↑ Crisis in the German cinema industry comes to a head: Ufa AG files for bankruptcy. welt.de, May 8, 2004, accessed February 5, 2012 .
- ^ Ufa crisis: Cinema in Dresden closes. Abendblatt.de, August 4, 2004, accessed February 5, 2012 .
- ↑ Circular cinema expanded to 1,400 seats. (No longer available online.) Sz-online.de, October 18, 2008, formerly in the original ; Retrieved February 5, 2012 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The history of the round cinema in Dresden. (No longer available online.) Cineplex.de, archived from the original on December 18, 2012 ; Retrieved February 5, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 51 ° 2 ′ 41.7 ″ N , 13 ° 44 ′ 13 ″ E