Disclosing Architecture: 18 Stories of Heritage and InnovationDisclosing Architecture: 18 Stories of Heritage and Innovation

Text Shannen van Akkeren, Huub Breuer, Lara Garé, Zoë van Zijderveld en Mirenne Zijlstra

At the start of Disclosing Architecture, it was found that the most common type of damage in the archive was caused by users. Damage can easily occur when files are too full, when drawings have to be unfolded, when works are repeatedly rolled out and back up, and when sheets are taped together. As the custodian of the National Collection, the Nieuwe Instituut’s task is to preserve the collection as well as possible for the future, but the works must also remain accessible to the public. It is and must remain a research archive. The accessibility, manageability and stability of the collection were the most important starting points for this project. The conservation of a research archive requires a specific approach. In order to improve the condition and accessibility of the archives, a large number of them have been conserved, (conservation) guidelines have been drawn up, and there is now a user protocol for researchers consulting the collection.

A key lesson is that a distinction can be made between active and passive conservation. During the project, a line was drawn between conservation that could be done in-house and conservation that had to be outsourced to paper conservators. Initially, entire archives were sent to conservation studios, but it was eventually concluded that passive conservation, such as repackaging, thinning out overfilled folders, smoothing out small folds and dog-ears, separating by technique and format, and detecting mould, could be carried out in-house. Active conservation is carried out externally by restoration studios. Active conservation includes repairing tears, smoothing sharp folds and rolled material, repairing edge damage, repairing and securing loose foils and removing adhesives such as tape or plastic stickers. We will continue to include this division between active and passive in our conservation activities in the future.

The concept of conservation has changed enormously. Whereas in the 1980s architects and archivists often repaired tears themselves with adhesive tape and sometimes even coloured works, today we make as few active interventions as possible. How will the future judge our decisions today? Will we have done too little?

The manuals developed up to streamline and support registration and conservation are dynamic documents that adapt to new knowledge and experience. Our registration and conservation guidelines are continually updated with input from the registrars, conservators and archivists. The user protocol for consulting documents at the Research Centre is also updated.

In developing and updating our Conservation Guidelines, we use the Design Drawings Damage Atlas to identify different types of damage. The Damage Atlas is the result of a collaboration between the Nieuwe Instituut and Metamorfoze, the national programme for the preservation of paper heritage.

As the damage in the archive is mainly due to use, the guidelines for registrars focus mainly on repackaging. By separating the formats, limiting the number of drawings per folder and flattening the material, damage from use can be limited. This makes the folders easier to handle, which in turn increases the stability of the collection.

The collection of the Nieuwe Instituut contains a wide range of different materials and production techniques. Although most of the drawings are on paper, materials such as plastic and canvas are also used. Plastic in particular can cause a chemical reaction and also damage surrounding drawings made of a different material.

In addition to the substrate, the production technique is also important. In the case of paper treated with chemicals, such as blueprints and diazotypes, there is only a suspicion that it may cause damage to other drawings. Nevertheless, Disclosing Architecture’s the conservation protocol has chosen to separate the techniques, because their influence on each other has not yet been properly researched. Techniques such as pencil, watercolour and pen drawings appear to be stable. However, because these detailed colour drawings are often beautiful presentation drawings, we have opted for preventive conservation. This is often done with Utoplex interleaves. Utoplex is also used to prevent adhesion between sheets and to prevent the ‘release’ of, for example, plastic adhesive foils. Further (follow-up) research is therefore needed to determine the influence of the various materials and production techniques on each other and whether a separation of techniques is necessary for optimal conservation.

A side effect of repackaging and separating materials is that archives are ‘pulled apart’, expanding and becoming more dispersed within the depot. This affects the context of objects within an inventory. This context can be largely reconstructed digitally through accurate registration in the digital collection management system Axiell. Disclosing Architecture’s focus on making the archives accessible online means that the context is also digitally available to users. In any case, the loss of context is a flexible concept, as it may have already occurred at earlier stages: in the architect’s office, during selection in the acquisition process, or, exceptionally, during consultation in the Research Centre. For this reason, we have opted for a digital traceable registration and we give priority to the management and conservation of the source material, which is the primary responsibility of an institution that manages the National Collection.

In order to make the collection as accessible as possible to users, everything needs to be accurately recorded. The registration of the archives supports the content (context) of the drawings. Processing everything in Axiell makes it findable, which makes management and research easier – especially now that we are adding keywords and photos to the records (keywords such as floor plans, elevations, sections, axonometric drawings or perspective drawings). In the future, these keywords, which are currently only visible internally, will ideally also be visible in the search portal of the online collection.

It is also important to track the progress of the project and the impact of the processes within the Collection department. Knowing exactly how what, and how much, has been done from the outset makes it possible to estimate the resources needed to optimise the workflow. For example, registrars now work together with the DigiLab because the selection of drawings for digitisation has been integrated into the registration process.

Conclusions and observations from the processing of the drawings have always been shared with each other. The exchange of knowledge and experience, for example between registrars and restorers, has been very important. We have organised special evaluation days for this purpose, during which we have evaluated the work and the process together. The results have always been processed. In the future, too, interim evaluations of the collection policy, both internally and with external parties, will continue to be essential.

We will continue to manage and make the archive accessible on the basis of the knowledge and experience gained during the project. A lot of work has been done on conservation and digitisation, but this is not the end of the story. The registration and conservation guidelines will be incorporated into the collection policy and will be implemented in the process for new acquisitions. Other projects within the Nieuwe Instituut, such as Linked Open Data and Asterisk*, the tool for more comprehensive description of archival objects, can now also be implemented. The protocols, collaborations and research of Disclosing Architecture are solid building blocks for the future.