Berlin Techno Club Tresor to Reopen, Host Tate-like Art Space
Legendary location to feature space for electronic artists

Berlin’s legendary Tresor techno club is to reopen in an old steam-heat generating plant in Mitte as early as March. The new space, to be called Modem, will also host an art center modeled on London’s Tate Modern.

The building, on Köpenicker Straße 73, boasts four levels, 20,000 square meters of space (215,278 square feet), and 30 meter ceilings (98 feet). It lends itself to the kind of third art space between the Nationalgalerie and Hamburger Bahnhof that many in Berlin, including mayor Klaus Wowereit, have been calling for.

“I was really only looking for a space for Tresor. When I was standing in the plant, any questions I had were answered,” said Dimitri Hegemann (51), its founder and owner.

Hegemann wants to promote electronic music and electronic art at Modem. He envisions hosting pieces similar in style to Olafur Eliasson’s “Weather Project” at the Tate Modern.

Tresor, meanwhile, will be situated in the plant’s basement and accessible through a separate door. It isn’t clear what exactly it will look like, but it’s possible Hegemann will reuse some of the original club’s fixtures, such as the ceiling tiles or doors, all of which he has in storage.

Hegemann opened Tresor in 1991 in the vaults (Tresor means vault) of the Wertheim department store building on Leipziger Strasse, which was destroyed in World War II. The club became famous worldwide for hosting groundbreaking DJs. Before it closed in 2005, 1.5 million people were said to have visited it. It is also played a role in German-German reunification, since kids from East and West Germany mixed here and in various other clubs like WMF for the first time.

Hegemann plans to open Tresor some time in the spring, perhaps on 16 March, the 16th anniversary of its founding.