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The Client.
The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, opened in 1960, is named after Sir Alfred Herbert a local industrialist who donated money to the Coventry City Council to help build the museum. Although work originally started in 1939, it stopped due to the War and didn’t resume until 1952. It has recently undergone a £20 million re-development which includes the addition of a glass-covered court, new galleries, museum stores and the History Centre.
The History Centre houses archives documenting the history of the city from medieval times and includes extensive material from World War Two when the city was heavily bombed and the Cathedral destroyed. It brings together the City Archives collections previously housed outside the Herbert and the Local Studies material from the Central Library.
The Challenge.
Having provided temporary offsite storage solutions for the Herbert and following rigorous selection criteria, Metalrax Storage were asked to design and install the shelving system for the History Centre. The main aim of the project was to maximise space and achieve cost efficiency within the History Centre stores, whilst still enabling safe and easy access. The collections consist of over 18,000 archive boxes of various sizes, rolled maps, periodicals, newspapers and books but also incorporate items such as plan chests and filing cabinets. There was also a requirement for a Visual Arts Store for items including drawings and framed art on paper.
The Solution.
In order to design a scheme that encompassed storage for the existing collection plus accruals Metalrax Storage worked with the members of the Herbert team to produce a design that showed how and where different collections were to be stored. The production of plans and elevations showing the capacity and positions of various parts of the collections and differing box types within the plan layout meant that when Metalrax Storage left site there was a clear concept of how the Archives and Local Studies collections were to be stored, and a sound basis from which to work on details of the archives collections layout.
Working with the members of the Herbert team it was possible for Metalrax Storage to design and install a cost effective scheme that catered for all the storage needs of the wide variety of collections held at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum.
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