A 'green archive' now protects drawings, pictures and plans in the Irish Architectural Archive, writes Dick Ahlstrom.
A huge concrete box with four holes in its roof now protects more than a million documents and pictures relating to Ireland's rich architectural heritage. The "green" archive doesn't use elaborate plant to maintain temperature and humidity and as a result runs on just a few euro per day.
The Irish Architectural Archive (IAA) maintains the collection that has built up rapidly since its establishment in 1976. The archive also has a new home, the elaborate and beautiful 45 Merrion Square, behind which the archive was built mainly underground.
"Technically we stand alone: we are an independent limited company with charitable status," says Colum O'Riordan, archive administrator at the IAA. "We are a useful resource for planners, but we stand apart from the planning process. We are not a conservation lobby."
About three-quarters of its resources come from the Departments of Art, Sport and Tourism and Environment and also from the Office of Public Works. The remainder comes from its own fundraising efforts.
The Republic had no architectural archive before the IAA. It grew out of a photographic exhibition in 1974 highlighting the architecture of Parnell Square organised by Dr Edward McParland of TCD's history of art department. He and Nicholas Robinson decided to lobby for the creation of an archive where these and other materials could be retained permanently, and so the archive was born.
The IAA collection has been open to the public since 1977. It currently includes about 200,000 architectural drawings dating from as early as 1690, 750,000 photographs ranging from the 1860s to the present and 15,000 items in its reference library including books, pamphlets and other documents.
It holds a collection of architectural scale models dating from the early 19th century to today. It also offers an online database with biographical details of Irish architects from 1720 through 1940.
Only yesterday the IAA celebrated its move into No 45 Merrion Square and the launch of its new purpose built archival storage unit. "We are trying to put these things down there not for 10 or 20 or 30 years but for centuries," says O'Riordan.
The IAA researched similar archives in other countries and early on decided to go green by reducing dependence on expensive plant to maintain stable conditions, he says. The archive wanted space, sustainability and low running cost.
The archive design provides for a large box with 227 square metres of floor space. The walls, ceiling and floor are concrete a metre thick, and this is clad externally with a half metre of insulation. An outer waterproof membrane protects the whole. "The water that is inside can't get out and the water outside can't get in," he says.
The roof of the archive supports a patio area outside the building and three of its four sides are built into the soil. "The wall thickness is the key," says O'Riordan. "One of the things building in the ground gives you is stable conditions." There is no heating or cooling as such in the building. Four automated vents in the roof bring in fresh air every day, controlling the amount in keeping with outside temperatures. A single pipe carries warm water that can gently heat the air, not just for warmth, but to control humidity. Even slight warming causes the porous walls to absorb humidity and this process can be reversed if things get too dry.
The system maintains a temperature of between 15-18 degrees Celsius and a relative humidity of 55 per cent plus or minus 2 per cent the whole year round. This matches the UK standard, BS5454, but does not require lots of conditioning plant to achieve it. "It more or less runs itself so long as we monitor it," adds O'Riordan.
The store's atmosphere reacts very slowly to changes, including the warmth and humidity delivered by visitors, he says. "One of the things that affects the store is people. You couldn't work in the store." As a result documents are removed or returned to the archive during two short sessions each day. This limits disturbance to the precious and irreplaceable documents.
More information about the archive and its collection, which is open to the public free of charge, is available from the web site: www.iarc.ie