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

Text Alfred Marks

In the 1920s, architects were able to donate their archives to the Dutch state for the first time. As the anticipated architecture museum had not yet been established, this took place without the involvement of any archival institution. The material went straight to the attics of the Rijksmuseum, was added to university collections or was stored in the offices of the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects (BNA) or the Architectura et Amicitia association. Little is known about the conditions in which the archives were kept.

Only in 1972 was the first repository for these archives established: the Netherlands Documentation Centre for Architecture (NDB). Following a brief period at Waterlooplein, the NDB moved to the 19th-century former Holland Iron Railway Company office building on Droogbak in Amsterdam. The NDB shared this building with several of Amsterdam’s municipal institutions. For an archive repository, this was far from ideal. There was no climate control system, resulting in significant temperature and humidity fluctuations. In winter, the heating was turned off on Friday evenings to save costs. On Monday, everyone started the week in a cold building which, due to the heating only having an on/off switch, would warm up considerably over the course of the week. Due to its wooden panelling and intermediate floors, the building posed a fire risk, and security was often an issue. For example, the rear entrance, which provided access to the bicycle storage area, was often left wide open and unstaffed. 

As the first archival institution, the NDB established the foundations of the current collection policy. An acquisition policy plan was drawn up and consideration was given to systematic inventorying, for example through the use of a classification system. New archives were regularly inventoried by university interns, and collection research primarily took place for publication purposes. To this end, researchers were given office space in the building, with the archive they were researching was located in their room. Eating, drinking and often smoking heavily over the documents were simply part of the routine back then.

I don’t intend to disparage the organisation of that time, far from it. A vast quantity of archives were acquired in a short period, often under great time pressure. This resulted in large backlogs in both registration and physical management. However, consideration was certainly given to the conservation and restoration of the collection. Various bodies were approached for advice and support, including the Netherlands Department for Monument Conservation (RDMZ) and the Central Laboratory for Research on Objects of Art and Science (the predecessor of the Netherlands Institute for Conservation. Documents from 1982 state that “if the archive is to remain usable in a few years’ time, conservation is urgently necessary”. Consequently, an early plea was made for the establishment of a fully-fledged restoration studio within a future architecture museum – a wish that remains unfulfilled to this day.

In 1988, the NDB merged with the Housing Foundation to establish the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI), which was to be located in Rotterdam. Architect Jo Coenen was commissioned to design a new building for the purpose. This meant that a major collection relocation was imminent.

I was hired as an archivist in 1990 to prepare for this move. Having recently graduated, and having gained work experience in the Maps and Drawings department of the State Archives (now the National Archives), where everything was meticulously registered, conserved and packaged, I was quite shocked by the state of affairs in the Droogbak building. Much archival material was either unpacked or contained in poor-quality boxes on a shelf. Much of the rolled material was either loose or stored in old tubes that were often too small. The drawings often protruded from them, soon causing additional damage. In the basement storage rooms, tubes and loose rolls were standing upright in garbage bags in a corner. Moreover, it was damp and musty, so mould was a real risk.

Plan drawings, whether folded or not, were often stored in stacks with only a basic numbering system on the protective wrapping. Drawings were also lying above on the shelves above without a number or packaging. These were often taken for presentation purposes and subsequently not returned to their correct place.

This was partly due to the lack of proper location records, which made searching for and putting back materials in the depots – for consultation in the reading room, for example – sometimes challenging. All in all, this was a poor starting point for the move. However, additional financial resources made it possible to tackle backlogs and begin preparations in earnest for the move under the banner of the ‘Great Leap’. The first step was to compile a comprehensive archive overview. While there was a reasonably up-to-date acquisition register, information for several archives had to be retrieved from correspondence.

Based on this overview, a plan of action could be drawn up:

• Was there a good inventory?
• If so, was the archive also properly packed?
• If so, the archive could be considered ready for relocation?
• If not, which was usually the case, an inventory was carried out. Given the time pressure, this usually took the form of a cursory placement list.
• Even then, the archive was packed and depot registration took place.

Slowly but surely, order began to emerge in the depots, giving us a clearer idea of the size of the collection. However, the volume increased due to the packing process, so we rented additional spaces and built temporary shelving to store the collection properly.

The first step in the passive conservation of the collection is to package the archives. When selecting the packaging, the guiding principle was to accommodate as many different formats as possible, bearing in mind that it was not feasible to create a custom package for each one. Furthermore, it was important to plan ahead. This meant taking the dimensions of the new depot’s shelves and racks into account when selecting the packaging. Ultimately, this resulted in the purchase of interchangeable packaging materials that matched the dimensions of the new shelving units. Fortunately, the budget allowed for the purchase of high-quality, acid-free packaging materials. The choices made at the time are still being followed today.

Although the packaging was a first step in terms of conservation, it must be noted that the material was packed as it was found. For example, rolled drawings were placed in new tubes without considering whether it would be better to store them flat. This approach was taken even for items in poor condition, such as those with crumpled ends. The same approach was taken with the large number of folded drawings (up to A4 size). Fragile tracings and other design drawings were transferred indiscriminately to archive and/or print boxes. Flat drawings were stored by size, but folded drawings were often repacked without further treatment. Active conservation was therefore not part of the Great Leap: the separation of techniques was omitted, resulting in damage to drawings remaining untreated. 

Perhaps the Great Leap’s greatest success was the enormous progress made in terms of access and registration. By entering all inventories and placement lists first into WordPerfect 2.4 and then into Word, they became keyword-searchable for the first time. Initially, they were not online, but available in the galleries. However, the development of the depot registration system was ground-breaking in that it maintained the Droogbak depot registration and the data for the depot layout in the new Rotterdam building. Based on this system, automated moving lists could be generated. It was a flexible and user-friendly system, warning users of registration errors, such as attempting to place a package on a shelf that had already reached its maximum capacity. The system continued to function alongside a collection information system for quite some time. Depot registration is now part of the AXIELL collection database.

Following the move in 1993, conservation remained a neglected area. After an acquisition freeze during the relocation period, the focus shifted primarily towards acquiring new archives. In the first few years, there was no room in the staffing structure for preservation and management staff, and overall, knowledge of conservation was limited. This was partly because no records were kept regarding the condition of the archives, as a central collection information system had not yet been implemented.

In 2011, Behrang Mousavi, who had just been appointed Head of Collection, commissioned a UPAA survey – a standardised method of assessing the physical condition of archival material. The results were negative. Based on this research, it was concluded that a large percentage of the collection was in such poor condition that handling and consulting the material was no longer justifiable. This was despite the fact that public access to the archives was the cornerstone of the entire collection policy. Ultimately, lobbying led to additional funding being allocated in 2018, enabling the Disclosing Architecture programme to be developed.

As part of this six-year heritage programme, around 500,000 sheets were conserved. This involved flattening rolled drawings, unfolding and storing folded drawings as flat sheets, thinning out and repacking boxes and portfolios that were packed too thickly, separating tracings and blueprints, and providing extra protection for fragile materials. Active conservation work was also carried out, including the removal of surface dirt, the repair of edge damage and tears, and the stabilisation of old adhesive tape to prevent adhesion. Furthermore, the registration of the archives has been significantly improved by assigning keywords, providing greater insight into the actual size of the collection. All the accumulated knowledge and experience has been documented in a conservation and registration protocol to serve as guidelines for managing the collection in the future.