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
214 Archive Buildings lectures, as well as a smaller room for seminars and lectures are situated on the left side of the entrance. The entrance hall is also devoted to the presentation of exhibitions. Climbing the broad staircase in the centre of the room, the visitor will reach a balcony. An adjacent room, especially protected and air-conditioned, is devoted to the exhibition of originals which must be carefully handled. Passing through the hall, the visitor will come into the research room, which surrounds an atrium in the core of the building. This room is devoted to the use of files, maps, plans and drawings, posters and photographs, as well as for feature and documentary films or tapes. All these materials are stored in repositories close to the sections of the research room in which they are used. An enclosed room (to receive phone calls) and an open counter are located in the back part of the researchers’ room for two archivists who assist the researchers and provide them with the documents they need. The nearest sections of the repositories are about 20 feet from this counter on the same floor. 4.2.3 The difference between usual office rooms and office rooms for archivists is not at all significant. The only special requests of the archivists are: sufficient shelves in every room to store five to six metres of records (if possible in a cupboard to protect them against damage caused by light); a hand-basin with warm and cold water is desirable, but it is not absolutely necessary; it is important to install cables or at least conduits for the later installation of cables for the use of dataprocessing devices, especially keyboards monitors, although a computer is not operational within the archives at present. During the process of planning the Bundesarchiv building several attempts were made to collect and describe all technical requirements for every room. Problems encountered in the laboratories made it necessary to develop a system for detailed description of every room. The result was the so-called “Raumeinzelbeschreibungen”: a technical description of every single room, with precise plans of them in a standardized form. A computer programme was used to facilitate the updating and to print out this documentation. The descriptions of the room indicate: the number of the room according to the list mentioned in chapter 3.1; a brief description of what the room is used for; the size of the room according to the list mentioned and the actual size the room will have in the new building, where these differ; the position of the room within the building; other rooms that have to be linked to this room; the quality needed for the floor; technical installations in the floor; special requirements for the walls, the ceiling; size of the door;
