Smoke and Mirrors: The Yenidze Cigarette Factory, Dresden

The Yenidze Cigarette Factory of 1909 became perceived as an industrial architectural advertising object that placed Dresden as an important center for the tobacco trade during the second half of the nineteenth century. Born from a unique client-architect relationship between Hugo Zietz and Martin Hammitzch, the factory’s importance to the modernist has been extremely understated. Smoke and Mirrors uncovers the history of the factory’s planning, design and construction, and for the first time, apart from the building’s historical narrative, places the addition to the Dresden skyline as consideration to the formative histories of the modernist movement.

David Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the Queensland University of Technology, where he teaches and researches architecture. His research investigates the formative histories of architectural Modernism and how this intersects with broader issues like industrialization. His books include Bruno Taut’s Design Inspiration for the Glashaus (Routledge, 2016) and History of the Mauser Rifle in Chile: Mauser Chileno Modelo 1895, 1912, and 1935 (Schiffer Military History, 2019).