About the Client:
The Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre is home to both the Royal Museums Greenwich stored collections and state of the art conservation studios.
The store and conservation centre, opened in 2018 houses over 70,000 items and provides public access to these otherwise hidden treasures, along with the skills and expertise of Royal Museums Greenwich conservation and its storage teams.
Requirements:
With a collection of items including artwork, textiles, historical records and more, the Royal Museums Greenwich’s collections are of international importance.
Prior to 2018 the collection and its conservation facilities were spread across 5 separate locations, which presented a number of difficulties for its team. The conditions in which the varying items were being stored was hard to monitor and the logistics of transporting the collections to and from storage, to conservation, photography and exhibitions was proving troublesome.
It was decided that to ensure the safety of this globally important collection a new building would be required. This new building would consolidate the collection storage, its conservation facilities and teams.
One of the core requirements for the new building was the simplification of the logistics. Easing the process of an object’s journey from arrival, through to conservation, photography, display and storage. To achieve this, both doors and corridors were designed to allow the easy transportation of even the largest objects.
Of course the safe storage of the collection was paramount, and new areas for storage were also specified, with temperature, light and humidity control to protect the items, and high density mobile and static storage solutions to cope with the weight, and shear numbers of items to be stored.
The Solution – Archive Storage:
The architects contacted the Rackline team after seeing their experience within the sector, and the range of solutions available. Fergus Doherty, Managing Director at Rackline spent time with the Museum curators examining the diverse items to be stored and the space available. Working with the museums collections team Rackline assisted in finalising the designs, ensuring that all of the collections had appropriate storage solutions.
Rackline were awarded the contract based on these designs and their ability to provide a full turnkey solution. Fergus’s 30 years of experience in the creation of storage for museums and heritage clients allowed him to design the perfect bespoke storage solutions for their needs, maximising their space and ensuring that their inventory was kept safe.
The solutions installed included: static shelving, mobile library shelving, bespoke cabinets, art storage racking and more. These when completed offered over 6,916 square metres of pull-out picture racking for framed artwork, storage for over 650 rolled textiles, over 2,000 linear metres of public records, storage for Naval uniforms and globes of various sizes to name just a few of the varied and mixed collections.
If you are hunting for the perfect storage solutions to protect your valuable collection, then find out more about our solutions for museums and heritage here. Alternatively give us a call, or fill in our contact form here.