Why it belongs in ORBIS
Former cotton mill in Leipzig-Plagwitz (founded 1884, once continental Europe's largest spinning mill), closed 1993 and reborn as an art center with roughly 100 studios and 11 galleries, including painter Neo Rauch among its early tenants.
The Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei (Leipzig Cotton Mill) was founded in 1884 and grew over the following decades into the largest cotton-spinning mill in continental Europe, reaching 240,000 spindles across roughly 25 acres of works by 1907. Cotton yarn production ended in 1992 and the mill formally closed in 1993. The vacated buildings were occupied by squatters in the years that followed, a process that gradually transformed the site into today's arts complex. Painter Neo Rauch, later a leading figure of the so-called Leipzig School, is cited as one of the pioneers of the site's artistic revival. The Spinnerei now houses roughly 100 artists' studios and eleven galleries and exhibition spaces, alongside architecture, design, jewelry, and fashion studios, plus the LURU cinema and the Residenz theater.