The former brewery, which houses the exhibition, underwent numerous redesigns in its past and acquired its current form at the very end of the 19th century. However, in the 1960s its brew kettles went cold and the premises were used as a warehouse. Following extensive conservation and reconstruction works between 2013 and 2015, a civil engineering museum was established here. If you feel like learning about skills or artisans, admiring the beauty of construction details or if you would like to learn more about basic principles of structure, then the civil engineering exhibition is the place to go!
The exhibition’s objective is to present the development of historical construction components, materials and structures in an attractive and comprehensive manner. The visitor has an opportunity to become acquainted with various construction materials (timber, stone, clay), their processing, and application in construction. Individual floors offer various types of construction structures from foundations and the building frame through different treatments of wall surfaces, types of windows and doors, relevant technical facilities of buildings to types of roof timbers and coverings.
Construction Materials
The Plasy brewery interconnects brewing rooms with rooms where the basic raw material, brewing malt, used to be prepared. The floor of the malthouse used to be covered in damp barley, which the maltster forked regularly to avoid moulding and to ensure proper germination. As the maltster used his skills to transform the nature’s gift into a new product essential for brewing, a carpenter, brick maker, stonemason, or lime burner used their craftsmanship to win the basic components necessary for construction of houses, castles, and churches. The exhibition of construction materials offers a glimpse of the side of construction which is in close touch with nature.
Rough Construction
The cold store floor was raised by almost 2.5 meters in the course of the brewery’s conversion into a warehouse. The space underneath was filled with rubble. During the preservation process, two cast iron columns from the 19th century, which had used to support ceiling vaults the imprints of which were still clearly visible on the walls, were discovered under the floor. The troubled past of this space strongly relates to the exhibition housed here. It is the part of construction in which a bricklayer plays the main role and in which the main frame of the entire house is built – its walls, vaults, columns. It is called “rough construction” not because it is not smooth, but because it comprises rough construction processes and the result is a “roughly” finished house.
