National Automobile Company

Multi-Story Automobile Factory – During WWI, AEG commissioned Peter Behrens to build a cutting-edge automobile factory. Its elaborate design was meant to proclaim the unbroken power of German manufacturing. Behrens also wanted to create a symbol for the social integration of all participants in industrial society. Workers and managers met at the center of the multi-story factory in an arcade-lined atrium. Chassis assembly began on the top floor. The various production floors were connected by 18 freight elevators, with finished automobiles rolling out on the ground floor and fueled up from a gas tank in the basement. The factory initially made trucks for the German army, then cars and buses until it was closed in 1934. Telefunken then used the site to develop television technology to broadcast the 1936 Olympics. After WWII it housed the Television Electronics Factory, which produced vacuum tubes for the East German television industry; its history is documented at the Industriesalon Schöneweide. Currently Deutsche Immoblien Entwicklungs AG is redeveloping the building and the entire Behrens wanterfront as a new neighborhood. The building's atrium was used as a shooting location for the television series Babylon Berlin.