Extensive reconstruction and modernization for 500 million crowns began today at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Brno University of Technology. The investment project is possible thanks to a subsidy from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports from the Development and Renewal of the Material and Technical Base of Public Universities programme. Over the next three years, the university will gradually modernize the interiors of most of the buildings on the campus. The work will take place during the operation of the complex and is divided into several stages. The first renovated premises should serve students and teachers next autumn.

Although the buildings of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering are repaired from the outside, many of the interiors seemed to freeze in the 1980s, when the complex was built. The extensive reconstruction that began today has changed that.

"We will finally get the space to the standard of the current millennium. There will be exchanges of wiring, repairs of classrooms, offices, teaching laboratories and corridors. And above all, there will be a dignified background for students, which has been lacking at the faculty so far. In the area by the two main staircases, there will be kitchens on each floor, space for self-study and rest between lectures," the secretary of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Petr Tesař describes.

The students themselves were involved in the preparation of the project so that the resulting project would suit their needs. "I am grateful to have been invited to meet with the architects as student representatives. We were able to present what we lack at the faculty from the student background and we always found a solution how to incorporate the matter into the reconstructed faculty premises. Now the faculty mainly lacks a larger number of study rooms, places for team projects and facilities for time between lectures. The reconstruction will bring us all this now, I can't wait for the students to be able to start using the new facilities,” Petra Kosová, the President of the Student Chamber of the Academic Senate of the FME, says.

Visualization of facilities for students in the articulated hall (source: Ateliér Velehradský, s.r.o.)

The builders will be the first to repair the A3 and KH3 buildings, which will house the Institute of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Industrial Design. As part of the reconstruction, the faculty plans to relocate those of the institutes that, in thirty years, have found themselves in a situation where they have premises in several places on the campus. This applies, for example, to industrial designers who, after years, move to their home institute and, in addition, acquire new, bright studios on the top floor of a reconstructed building. A workshop for students is also to be set up on the first floor, where they will have the background and technology to create models and prototypes.

In the first stage, a total of 7,500 square meters of interiors will be renovated. The modernized premises should serve employees and students as early as next autumn, when the renovation work will be moved to another pair of buildings. Blocks A2, A3, A4, B1, B2, B3, KH2 and KH3 should be repaired within three years. The faculty library will also see a new look, which will be extended to the entire floor and the depository will be acquired in the basement.

Visualization of new library premises (source: Ateliér Velehradský, s.r.o.)

The repairs will also affect other parts of the faculty campus. "We are also starting to repair the auditorium, which will undergo interior repairs, but at the same time we plan to invest heavily in audiovisual technology. The repair of these premises should be completed within about six months," Tesař adds.

The money for the works for 500 million crowns will largely go from the state budget, the minimum mandatory co-financing from the university's own resources is set at fifteen percent.