More space for books, newspapers and photos - foundation stone laid for SPK's storage magazine in Berlin-Friedrichshagen
Press release from 09/02/2009
Today, in the presence of Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel, Head of Department at the BKM, and Engelbert Lütke Daldrup, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Building, the foundation stone is laid for the storage centre of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in the Friedrichshagen district of Berlin. The new building, which will be realised in three phases, will meet the long-term storage requirements of the Berlin State Library, the Ibero-American Institute and the bpk - Picture Agency for Art, Culture and History.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, says: "This repository is an urgently needed addition to the other locations of the State Library, the IAI and the bpk picture agency, whose capacities will be exhausted in the foreseeable future. The new building will ensure that the Foundation's holdings are preserved for future generations in a quality commensurate with their importance."
From 2011, around 22,000 square metres of main usable space will be available in the first section of the four-storey warehouse, built according to plans by Munich architect Eberhard Wimmer. Of this, around 17,000 square metres will be purely storage space, offering room for around 6 million volumes. The costs for the construction of the first section of the storage depot are estimated at around 84.7 million euros. Sections 2 and 3, planned for 2035 and 2060 respectively, will roughly double the space and storage capacity. The Berlin State Library alone already has almost 3 million volumes ready for relocation. This includes part of the newspaper collection, around 1.1 million volumes of periodicals from the Potsdamer Straße building and holdings that are less in demand for use, which will create space for the newly acquired, current literature. The Ibero-American Institute will store old holdings acquired until 1974 in Friedrichshagen. In addition to books and journals, these include microfilms, photographs and works of art. The bpk - Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte will store its valuable original photographic negatives and prints in the storage magazine, which is optimally equipped for conservation.
As there will be no publicly accessible user facilities or reading rooms in Friedrichshagen, the collections will be transported daily by lorry to the central locations of the institutions. In addition, selected texts and journal articles can be scanned and made available electronically. To protect the stored cultural assets, the repository will be equipped with an appropriate air conditioning system and a separate room for microfilms, cooled to 2 degrees Celsius. An electrically operated compact shelving system will ensure that the volumes are stored in as little space as possible. The stacks will have UV-free lighting without daylight, while the workstations of the sorting centres will be grouped around four atriums. From there, the books are transported to the loading station for the lorries by means of a book transport system.
The storage warehouse is the first building of the so-called "Speicherstadt Friedrichshagen" of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. A new building for the depots and workshops of the National Museums in Berlin, which will also be constructed in modules, will also be built on the approximately 123,000 square metre federally owned site at Fürstenwalder Damm 388. The first construction phase will cover just under a quarter of the total 50,000 square metres of main usable space required. It should be available from around 2015 and solve two pressing problems: Objects from the Pergamon Museum and the Altes Museum, in particular the antiquities collection, will have to be removed in order to prepare the buildings for their basic restoration and expansion. In addition, the Ethnological Museum urgently needs replacement space for its depot building in Dahlem, which is no longer functional. In addition to the depots, the new building will also contain the functional areas necessary for researching and preserving the objects, such as restoration workshops and workrooms. In the second construction phase, further depots and workshops will be created for the other collections of the National Museums in Berlin.