Laying of the foundation stone for the new Mainz Archaeological Centre building

After completing the excavation pit and removing the remaining historical stonework, on 5th May 2017 there was a celebration for the laying of the foundation stone for the new Römisch-Germanische Zentralmuseum (RGZM - Romano-German Central Museum) building - the 51 million euro Archaeological Centre - in the southern part of the old town in the federal state capital Mainz.

“The Giant”, as the new building is termed by Prof. Konrad Wolf, the Minister for Economics, Further Education and Culture, and Michael Ebling, the Mayor of Mainz, will become the new home for the RGZM from 2020.

The President of the Leibniz Association, Prof. Matthias Kleiner, and the General Director of the RGZM, Prof. Falko Daim, highlighted the importance and distinctiveness of the new museum, which will serve as a research centre and exhibition building.

The L-shaped building designed by Darmstadt architects Bernhardt + Partners will be divided into two wings - one as an exhibition wing and the other as an institutional wing. Across approx. 9,700 square metres of floor space on 4 planned levels, exhibition areas, the RGZM library, offices, a museum shop, a bistro, a lecture hall, workshops, laboratories etc. are planned. The 95m-long curtain-wall brick facade along Rheinstraße will then become part of the main access to the centre of Mainz from the south east.
The planning and execution are technically very challenging because of the 5.50 metre deep excavation pit and the proximity to the Rhine river, as well as the complexity of the support structure with multi-level, wall-like supports and different geometries of the floor plan.

The above-mentioned participants as well as the Managing Director of LBB, Holger Basten, and the Secretary of State Dr. Stephan Weinberg, with the support of the foreman of the construction company Riedel Bau GmbH & Co. KG sealed the symbolic foundation stone, in which a bottle of delicious local Riesling wine was laid. It remains to be seen if the wine will still taste good after a few hundred years!

Mr Dipl.-Ing. Heinz Steiger, Test Engineer and Managing Director of KREBS+KIEFER Ingenieure GmbH, Mainz Office, is responsible for the structural testing and supervision for this building project.