Inside the market hall

Since the beginning of August 2011 the Grossmarkthalle has been filled with construction equipment such as internal scaffolding and several cranes. These are being used to renovate the concrete grid facade and roof shells, as well as to construct the new building elements, which are being integrated into the hall as a separate house-in-house system.

The new basement and ground floor, as well as the first few floors of the internal buildings are now in place, and the wide set of stairs, which will lead up to the conference area, already gives a first impression of the dimensions and proportions of the new building elements in relation to the hall. The concrete core of the entrance building, which has already emerged out of the gap in the hall, now shows the location of the entrance building and its alignment between the double office tower and the entrance on Sonnemannstrasse. Immediately next to it, at the western end of the hall, part of the floor of what is to be the staff restaurant has already been laid. The restaurant is also being constructed according to the house-inhouse concept.

The renovation of the concrete grid facade and the roof shells is also progressing. 12 of the original concrete shells still remain. They were constructed using the Tokret process, which was state-of-the-art at the time and one of the reasons why the Grossmarkthalle became a listed building in 1972. Three of the shells have already been restored, and, contrary to initial fears, their quality turned out to be amazingly good.

However, some of the hall’s other supporting structures, e.g. parts of the box girders, require more renovation work than originally anticipated. To this end, a detailed analysis will be conducted on all the supporting structures to enable the structural engineers to develop the necessary reinforcement, e.g. for the gutter bearers.

As for the concrete grid facade, new windows have been put in with double glazing. Even though this is heavier, it was still possible to make the new window frames out of narrow sections similar to those of the original single-glazed windows.