First stone of new building laid

22 September 2009

Ceremonial preparation of the stone.


The first stone of the new building, Building 42, was laid in a special ceremony on Wednesday 9th September. The building, which is under construction adjacent to B40 on the Meyrin site, will provide 290 new desks and several medium sized conference rooms across four split-level floors.

The project is a response to the lack of office space for CERN’s ever-growing number of users, and has been paid for with a loan from the Swiss Building Foundation for International Organisations. When it is completed towards the end of next year, offices containing three desks apiece will be distributed fifty-fifty between ATLAS and CMS.

The new building has been designed in a U shape in order to maximise the number of naturally lit offices and is being built into the slope behind Building 40 (side B-C), to avoid interfering with the view or the amount of light reaching offices in the existing building. A terrace, where people will be able to meet with colleagues to discuss ideas over coffee or catch up with friends over lunch, will link the two buildings, along with some small areas of greenery.


Graphic of the design, next to Building 40


Over the clamour of active construction noise, Director General Rolf Heuer addressed a crowd of 100 guests congregated on the existing Building 40 terrace, overlooking the construction site, at the ceremony on September 9th. There were also short speeches from representatives from the Swiss authorities: the Mayor of Meyrin, Roland Sansonnens; Geneva Councillor for the Department of Institutions, Laurent Moutinot; and State Secretary for Education and Research, Mauro Dell’Ambrogio.



Lowering of the stone

While the Mayor gave credit to CERN for the socio-cultural variety that exists in Meyrin today, it was clear from the several light-hearted but hopeful mentions made of “future Nobel Prizes” that the DG and other speakers have high expectations for the inhabitants of the new building.

Following the speeches, the men each placed a scroll inside a blue metal canister. These were papers related to the building – plans, building permits, a record of the loan, and other items. Some 2009 Swiss coins were the last addition to the time capsule, before it was placed inside the large hollowed-out brick on the table in front of them.

In a scene reminiscent of a cutting-of-the-cake at a wedding, the four men posed for photographs together with trowels hovering over a bucket of cement, before beginning to fill in the brick and submerge the time capsule.

Finally, a large shadow loomed over the tent that had been erected for the ceremony, and a crane swung around to pick up the newly finished stone. As guests looked on from above, it was lowered down into a perfectly sized hole which had been left in the foundations of the building. Guests were then treated to guided tours of the site in the afternoon sunshine.

 

 

 

Ceri Perkins

ATLAS e-News