Sustainably designed, realised with modular elements
The new district administration building for Mainz-Bingen is being constructed using a hybrid timber construction method.
The administrative centre of the Mainz-Bingen district is located in Ingelheim am Rhein. Because there was no longer enough space in the original administrative building, those in charge decided on a new building. In a modern timber hybrid construction with an open comb structure, the building with 100 office spaces unfolds on a 10,000-square-metre site along the main access road. After a public tender, the choice of sanitary installation fell on industrially prefabricated installation walls from TECEsystem. ‘It was a great advantage that everything was from a single source, reducing the number of interfaces between trades and minimising the potential for error,’ says René Koch, branch manager of ZWP Ingenieur-AG from Wiesbaden.
Sustainably developed and constructed
The design comes from the district's own building management department: the four floors above the concrete underground car park have been built entirely from a sustainable building material, namely wood. ‘A wooden construction means reduced loads. This means that a smaller foundation can be designed and less material is used than in conventional construction. Overall, thanks to wood, costs are lower and construction can be completed more quickly,’ explains architect Monika Gerharz. The energy concept developed by ZWP Ingenieur-AG is equally sustainable, with the new building meeting the KfW 55 standard. The building's layout is heavily striated. While the storage and kitchen areas are located in the main structure in the middle of the building, there are three sanitary cores per floor with six toilet facilities each in the corners.
Prefabrication speeds up the process and minimises errors
When the plumbing fixtures were installed, the choice fell on the industrially prefabricated installation walls of TECEsystem. Since these are delivered to the construction site completely prefabricated ex works, time-consuming assembly steps were no longer necessary. 168 industrially prefabricated TECEsystem installation walls have been used throughout the new building – partly as privacy walls between two sanitary rooms, partly as pre-walls. ‘The tender was product-neutral and open-ended; the executing company Schupp chose TECEsystem and realised a project with it for the first time,’ explains planner Koch. Flexibility in a possible extension, time savings on the construction site and the reduction of errors were decisive factors in the interior design.
Planner Koch, who previously had little contact with industrially prefabricated installation walls, is now convinced: ‘We have had very good experiences. There were fewer interfaces, less risk potential in terms of defects and construction delays, and thus far fewer mistakes than in conventional construction. There was only one company, not several contacts. We only had the executing company as a contact. That was much easier; otherwise the coordination effort would have been much greater for us. In addition, we received very good advice from TECE.’ Project manager Fabian Uebel from the executing installation company Schupp GmbH from Idar-Oberstein says: ‘The TECEsystem system is a real time saver with the right planning and corresponding preliminary work. The installation walls come to the construction site just in time and only need to be aligned and screwed there. If the framework conditions allow it in future projects, we will gladly reuse TECEsystem.’
