Location: Romania

Field: Architecture

Use: Archives

Size: 10.000+ sqm

On the background of increasing volumes of judiciary documents needing archiving and severe space shortages in existing buildings, I was requested to analyze design solutions working in tandem with the design of new document archiving procedures to address the space shortage issue and improve document accessibility. My input consisted of:

  • comparing archival systems in terms of storage efficiency, accessibility and site requirements
  • rough estimate of shelf length based off document numbers, including yearly increase and disposal estimates
  • integrating document classification as per legally required storage time into design principles
  • estimate of surface area and volume for on-site* and remote (regional) archives respectively
  • identifying missing data for document estimates and inventory practices
  • researching best practices in terms of document access
  • summarizing all of the above in a design brief and subsequent report

All of the above were summarized in a design brief for remote archives, i.e., separate buildings mainly used for archival storage, and a subsequent design report for on-site archives, i.e., archival storage spaces within judiciary buildings, with proposed vertical and mobile shelving solutions respectively.