Kesselhaus

From boiler room to public venue

Before it was filled with people, the Kesselhaus was the boiler room of the Schultheiss-Brauerei. The three-story building, rebuilt in the twenties on the site of the old machine house, preserves the red brick, the industrial height, and the fortress-like gesture that Franz Heinrich Schwechten imposed on the complex. After the closure of beer production in 1967 and the declaration of the site as an industrial monument, the hall found a second life in the nineties: a television channel renovated it for a live program and, with the major restoration of the Kulturbrauerei, it reopened as a concert and party venue in Prenzlauer Berg.

An industrial box for concerts and clubbing

Kesselhaus does not operate as a nightclub with fixed hours. It is a multipurpose hall for up to 1050 standing people—about 250 if the stalls are seated—where pop, rock, jazz, blues, Francophone and Latin American music, readings, dance, theater, and club series coexist. Linkin Park, The Killers, Billie Eilish, Kiasmos, and Paul van Dyk have performed in this very box. The adjacent Maschinenhaus functions as a smaller concert and theater hall; an interior passage allows both halls to be joined and, for large formats, to also connect with the neighboring Palais. There is a gallery, a cloakroom on the ground floor, a 10 × 6 meter stage, and a parking garage with access via Sredzkistraße.

Vandit, Move iT! and the electronic dance floor

In Berlin's club culture, the venue has been home to Paul van Dyk's Vandit Night and Move iT!, the nineties party that the venue itself maintains as a resident format. Festivals such as Jazzdor, Synästhesie, Mississippi Blues & BBQ, or the French Night of the Fête de la Musique mark the other pole: a dense schedule, with about 300 concerts per year. The main system is L-Acoustics KARA with SB18 subwoofers and a Yamaha CL5 console, designed for both live performances and dance nights. The musical profile seeks trends and places them in an intercultural framework, with a particularly solid reputation in world music, Eastern Europe, and the Francophone scene.

Consense and the pulse of Prenzlauer Berg

Since 2002, the Consense Gesellschaft zur Förderung von Kultur, led by Sören Birke, has operated Kesselhaus and Maschinenhaus. The venue is part of the Berlin Clubcommission and the Berlin Music Commission. Entrance is via Knaackstraße 97 or Sredzkistraße 1, inside the Kulturbrauerei. The box office is open on weekdays; the public arrives according to the schedule. In 2026, the site's cultural project celebrates 35 years, with the old boiler still at the center of that history.