2D/3D Animation
Historical 3D reconstruction of the shopping mall am Brand in Mainz
Prof. Hartmut Jahn
Prof. Michael Orthwein
Dipl.-Des. Manfred Liedtke
A large, imposing department store from the Middle Ages, right in the middle of downtown Mainz? Unfortunately, almost nothing bears witness to this nowadays and many Mainz citizens are even completely unaware of it. Until the department store was demolished in 1812, the building, which was built at the beginning of the 14th century, offered a stately sight. It was probably the first of its kind in the southwest and once a junction of European trade routes.
The Project
Within the framework of Stadt der Wissenschaft 2011, the Institute for Historical Regional Studies (IGL) and the Institute for Media Design (img) of the University of Applied Sciences Mainz have joined forces and put together an interdisciplinary team of art historians, historians, media designers, and information and measurement technology specialists in order to investigate this forgotten piece of Mainz history to come to life again. They were developed by i3mainz (Institute for Spatial Information and measurement technology), the GDKE Directorate of the Landesmuseum Mainz and the Academy of Sciences and of literature Mainz.
While the i3mainz experts used 3D scanning to track down the past from a technical point of view, the img designers with the animation of the historical discoveries. The initial aim of the project was to revive the 14th century department store in a three-dimensional reconstruction on the basis of historical-art research and the information gathered in the form of documents, reports and illustrations, thus creating a basis for discussion for further research.
The Result
The figure of the department store Madonna was generated step by step from a high-resolution grid model that had been created by laser scanning from the original (left) in the Mainz Landesmuseum.
The first result of this project is a 3D visualization of the department store, which has been on display in the permanent exhibition of the Mainzer Landesmuseum since September 2011. In 2012, a series of lectures on the Mainz department store and other medieval department stores in Germany was given in cooperation with the Landesmuseum Mainz.
Parallel to this, an edition of the first Mainz Department Store Regulations from 1437/44 was produced in the summer of 2013, which also contains details on the organization of the department store, trade in the city and in the Mainz harbor. Starting with the presentation of the original text, a transcription true to the letter, a translation into modern German and a detailed glossary make it possible to study this source of great importance for economic history.
Reconstruction of a table scene of a department store clerk
The publication “Shopping in the Middle Ages” presents the research results of this project in the new form of a media book and offers new insights into the medieval urban and economic history of Mainz.