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
212 Archive Buildings be reduced by different means: special attention has therefore been paid to all details of the planning in order to avoid or minimize the costs for energy, especially for air-conditioning. Following experiences gained in the archives of the city of Köln, the repositories were built without windows and with extremely thick brick walls as described in chapter 4.2.4. Except for heating during the coldest days in winter and perhaps for drying the air for about five or eight days in summer, no air-conditioning will be needed in the repositories of the Bundesarchiv building. This does not of course apply to the repositories for colour films, where we decided to have minus eight degrees. In all other repositories it seems to be possible to reduce the energy costs due to their special construction. This construction was expensive, but it will be economical in the long run. The installation of technical equipment was carefully considered in order to avoid later costs for maintenance, especially if there was not a real archival need for a certain device. For example the Bundesarchiv refused the proposal of the architect to install a computerized access control system for the visitors and staff members using the underground garage, although the money to buy the system would have been available. On the other hand, the Bundesarchiv insisted on certain devices whenever it was certain that they would rationalize the archivist’s work. For example an automated transportation system has been installed with self-driving containers which can transport records from and to all parts of the repositories, the researchers’ rooms or wherever they are needed. The installation of the rails, on which the containers are driven, caused problems for the architect because they had to pass through fire protecting walls. Although these technical difficulties had to be solved and the costs for the solutions and for the system itself have been comparatively high, we assume that this system will help to reduce the time and manpower necessary to transport records in all parts of the building. To summarize these arguments: the costs for special constructions or for the installation of certain devices should not be approved by the architect and the archivist without a precise examination of the later costs or possible savings, which might result from their installation. c) The brief to the architect should be based on the specific archival tasks to be carried out in the building: 1. to facilitate research, to organize exhibitions — area for the public or lectures 2. to index, appraise, repair or in general to - office rooms, laborahandle records tories 3. to protect and store records - repositories These three different areas have to be determined precisely, since each room in the list of rooms mentioned above has to be assigned to one of these areas. Mixing rooms of a different area should be avoided, they should be grouped together as units. This must not lead to separate buildings for each area.
