Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 39. (1986)
Archive Buildings and the Conservation of Archival Material. An Expert Meeting, held in Vienna, Austria October 30 - November 1, 1985 - BUCHMANN, Wolf: Planning an Archive Building. The Cooperation between Architect and Archivist
210 Archive Buildings bliothek” did not agree to the proposal of the jury, a second competition was organized between the architects, who held the first five places in the first competition. The final decision abput the plan, which now will be used for the construction, was taken at the end of May 19843). Even if this might not be regarded as a typical development, it is evident that the organisation of a competition for a large and complex building will cause delays. An architect working in an agency for the federal administration and the administration of Rheinland-Pfalz, (Rhineland-Palatinate, one of the states of the Federal Republic of Germany) was appointed to plan the building for the Bundesarchiv. In my opinion, it has proved valuable to discuss in detail all aspects of an archivist’s work with one architect. After having studied several archive buildings and after having exchanged arguments and experiences, he proposed several plans. One of them was accepted by the Bundesarchiv and approved by the ministries involved within a period of about six months. The outstanding experience for me was the very positive form of cooperation between this architect and the archivists during that most important part of the planning, especially his readiness to find solutions for the most sophisticated problems of the archivists. I assume that this would not have been possible to the same extent when dealing with an architect, whose plan had already been approved by a jury. Trying to summarize experiences gained as an expert member of the jury for the “Deutsche Bibliothek” and in cooperating with the one architect appointed to plan the Bundesarchiv building, I do not believe that a definitive recommendation can be given. The decision about how to handle the problem depends to a great deal on the circumstances, which are different for every new building. The lack of time due to the urgent need for the availability of new repositories made the decision comparatively easy for the Bundesarchiv. 4.2.1 An archive building cannot be compared with a normal office building. In an archive building there are special areas like the repositories, rooms for exhibitions, for the researchers or for lectures. The archivist should therefore include literature about library buildings in his studies, especially since the mass of literature on libraries greatly exceeds the number of publications about archives. Visits not only to archives but also to library buildings and - to some extent - modem museum buildings are highly recommended. The Bundesarchiv therefore invited the architect and some of his staff members to visit several other new archives and library buildings, for example the Archives at Den Haag, the Public Record Office at Kew and the city archives at Köln. It had to be the aim of the Bundesarchiv to convince the architect that an archive building cannot be regarded as a usual office building but to point out 3) Der Neubau der Deutschen Bibliothek: Dokumentation zum 2. Architektenwettbewerb (Sonderveröffentlichungen der Deutschen Bibliothek 14, Frankfurt am Main 1984).
