Archives is the information infrastructure that finds out the records with historical and cultural value from a great number of records in our society, and preserves them permanently in order to hand down them to posterity and provide the public who w...
Archives is the information infrastructure that finds out the records with historical and cultural value from a great number of records in our society, and preserves them permanently in order to hand down them to posterity and provide the public who want to get information from them. In these days, archive is required to expand its role as offer of public services such as leading of preserved records, education and exhibition breaking from its traditional role as mere safekeeping of records. Word-class records culture of Korea had ever been depressed for a short period in Japan's colonial rule of Korea and social chaos after liberation. However, it has spread gradually that social recognition about significance of records preservation and necessity of archives through recent establishment of related law. Especially, as local government communities are required by law to establish archives, it is expected that number of archives constructed by them will be increased continuously from now on. The studies on construction of archive have been not thoroughgoing enough. Even though spatial plan is important, prior studies and the standards for facilities in every country are limited to temperature and humidity of library, or equipments. So, general guideline for plan has been not given effectively and properly. On the basis of such awareness of the problem, this study has been conducted with the purpose to prepare definite planning guidelines for understanding the facility program of archive and the reasonable way to divide and arrange each space in the whole space. This is the result derived from theoretical consideration and the positive analysis of real cases.
First, preparation of reasonable planning guidelines for effective role of the facility is very important to establish archive successfully. So the decision-making process referred as architectural programming should be required. Particularly, archive has a special purpose as safe and permanent preservation of records; therefore it is so significant to collect opinions of various organizations related to its establishment and work out an architectural programming to prepare reasonable planning guidelines from them. And all of information decided by architectural programming must be given to designer exactly, after putting them to right with specific language or figure.
Second, according to the analysis of architectural programming for archive, there are external architectural factors including an object in establishing archive and location, and spatial planning factors including facility program, circulation system and spatial zoning in basic architectural factors related to spatial plan for archive. The basic requirements for architecture that planning factors have to satisfy has been analyzed by theoretical consideration and case study. The results are as follows.
① Reasonable location selection
Archive's location is so important to safety and extension of place, and accessibility of facility. Therefore, developer have to put forth their whole energy into location selection that is proper for an object in establishing archive and function of archive not for a simple economic sense. These are the main conditions to select location for archive.
- Security of the area and accessibility capable of the desired scale of facility and space for extension.
- Safe location from natural and artificial disaster.
- Establishment of infrastructure such as adjacency of related facilities, a traffic network, water supply and drainage, and a communications network.
- Economical efficiency of investable estimates.
② Safety of records
Safety of records is the most basic requirements for architecture from historical and cultural aspect of preserved records in archive. Therefore, space for archive needs to satisfy capability for security and environmental control.
- Capability for security
To ensure capability for security, security area should be set up around storage area and archival processing area, where records move or place, to separate location of the areas and circulation system. Especially, independence of circulation system is the most important requirements for architecture to security of facilities. For this reason, the circulation system of archive requires to be classified into the route of records, staffs and readers, and each functional route from entry system to internal route (vertical and horizontal routes) must be designed separately to be not mixed.
- Environmental control capability
In environmental aspect, archive construction must take mechanical care with a room conditioning system to maintain the library's indoor environment constantly. However, spatial plan needs to design with consideration of environmental control capability to deal with conditioning system trouble or temporary outdoor climatic change. Accordingly, environmental zoning should be divided into Critical area and Non-Critical area. If possible, critical area should be designed as introversive structure surrounded by other areas in order to protect primarily from outdoor climatic change or all sorts of pollutants. Furthermore, a buffer zone should be formed the boundary between Critical area and Non-Critical area to prevent records from damage caused by difference of environmental condition between two areas.
③ Mutual connection between functional areas.
The spatial system of archive need to have zoning and circulation system to ensure business connection based on archival manage process. So facility spaces of archive need to be divided properly according as specific object and function to set up each area. In this study, therefore, it is proposed to divide the facility space into 10 functional areas. And it is more effective to arrange these areas in order of archival manage process. Especially, detail facilities of archival processing area have to arrange between accessioning area and library to increase efficiency.
④ Extension
It is certain that the preserved records in archive get increased over time. Therefore, it is important to decide optimum facility area for library in spatial plan for archive. As the analysis result of this study, library area is generally 40~50% of the whole space. However, it is so difficult to make an accurate estimate of amount of preserved records, thus it is the most significant requirement of archive to ensure extension capability of library for increased records later on. At first, to do this, it needs to security spare space for extension in advance or reflect possibility of ensuring the space for extension later on when the location is selected. In spatial planning aspect, horizontal extension needs to be considered first by arranging library on the ground intensively if possible. Furthermore, it is more effective to design library as a square for extension capability as well as security of available space to arrange bookshelves. In addition, it requires considering phased extension in the primary architecture reflected gradual increased of preserved records. Specifically, phased extension can be classified into primal extension that changes internal space into library, and extension of building itself.
⑤ Publicness & convenience
Publicness & convenience of archive is its functional requirement as a new information infrastructure not as a mere storage for official documents. It contains spatial planning requirement to provide public service, security of accessibility to the location and realization of construction's symbolic image to revitalize the facility. Archive requires every available space for public service. Also, it needs to connect areas for using records such as a reading room, an exhibit hall and a lecture room with main lobby in order to shorten circulation distance. Furthermore, it has to make available for the use of convenient facilities such as cafeteria and lounge for visitors (including staffs). It also has to connect with main lobby in order to make easy to move from one area to another. Likewise, outdoor requires a pleasant place with enough parking place, landscape architecture or some facilities for a rest.
Third, as the result of case study, overseas local archives tend to be established as a complex facility with public library or museum. It is considered as a great alternative plan to solve the financial burden of local government community which has no archive yet, and to revitalize archive with a complex facility. Special object of archive as preservation of records must not be overlooked when archive is designed as a complex facility. So, lobby, loading dock, machine room, and electric control room can share their spaces, however, other areas for program should be separated their location and circulation system, especially security zone including preservation area and library must be arranged independently in separate place.
Fourth, on the basis of the analysis results, the spatial composition model that can be applied to future architectural design for archive flexibly is as follows.
① This is the process for design of the spatial composition model. At first, the whole space of archive is arranged on the X axis after being classified into five security levels according as accessible level of visitors and staffs. And it is classified into five environment levels according as amount of preserved records, possibility of exposure to the outside pollution source, and indoor environment conditions that is prescribed in the standards for facility. Then, it is arranged on the Y axis of the spatial composition model reflected the security levels. Finally, the basic spatial structure matrix with 25 detail areas is created completely.
② Archive's detail available sections are arranged on the detail area of completed basic structure matrix, and then, mutual circulation is connected with each other depending on the relation between operations in every functional area. At length, the final spatial composition model is completed and you can see it in [figure 6-15].
③ In the process for model design, it is found that separate zoning for library is so important in spatial plan for archive. In addition, it is found that there is a similar spatial level in the detail required rooms included in 10 categories of archive's available area suggested by this study. It is also the result reflected the relations between operations of the detail required rooms included in every area. Therefore, it is considered that it is more effective to reflect classification system of required area for archive suggested by this study into the future spatial plan for archive.
④ In the spatial plan for archive, the lower level area should play a role as a buffer zone to ensure the secure and environmental capability of the upper level area. Furthermore, proper circulation control system and environmental buffer zone must be considered in nod of each level area.
Architecture is so complicated and difficult work because creativity of designer and function of construction should be harmonized. Particularly, in case of a special functional construction as archive, a designer has to understand definitely the functional requirements for plan before he/she reflects his/her creative idea into the plan. For this reason, this study has been conducted to give the basic information for spatial plan. After considering all the results of this study, we reached the spatial composition model with flexible form reflected general requirements for archive's spatial plan, requirements for detail available areas planning, and environmental, secure, circulation requirements for archive.
It is expected that this result will be the basic guideline for spatial plan related future archive design. However, this study has been conducted as a pilot study of archive construction in comprehensive aspect, so it was excluded that another important factor of spatial plan, that is, more detail requirements such as estimate method for proper required area and detail measurements of area. Even though there were some differences from our country, the subject of research and analysis focused on the foreign cases because of limited case caused by domestic situation with no complete system as well as no case of local archive.
Therefore, more specific spatial plan guideline for archive should be supported by continuous and systematic following study of more detail requirements including area and measurement of archive in addition to the general requirements as results of this study. And it has to contribute to spread establishing archive in local governments that could be increased by continuous studies related to archive design. Furthermore, it is expected that the archive will position as a new local cultural facility with development of records culture through these studies.