2018 International Museum Construction Congress

This workshop will cover the important steps to ensuring building project success. Attendees will learn about developing a vision for a building project, setting roles and responsibility of staff and community, and linking the project to strategic planning. Developing architectural and exhibition designs, defining project components, budgets and business plans will be featured. Right sizing, living through projects and dealing with the realities of post-opening life will be covered. Attendees will be encouraged to engage with the presenters and colleagues on problem solving ideas.

This session will discuss the evolution of the Tirpitz Museum and a behind the scenes view of the project. Tirpitz is a 2,800m2 “invisible museum” which opened in 2017 on Denmark’s West Coast and integrates four independent institutions: a WWII bunker museum; an amber museum; a local history museum; and a gallery for special exhibitions. The existing bunker, a relic of WWII, sits in a nature preserve that prohibits construction, however an opportunity arose to build into an artificial dune, created during wartime to transport guns to the bunker. A full transformation of this historic site, Tirpitz becomes a sanctuary in the sand and acts as a gentle counterbalance to the dramatic history of the surroundings. Hosted by the Museum’s Director and BIG Architects who designed the project, the session will shed light on the ambition, evolution, design process, and success of the museum which received more than 100,000 visitors in the first two months of opening, exceeding the museum’s visitor target for the entire first year.

Scheduled to partially open in 2019, The Grand Egyptian Museum will be the largest museum in the Arab world. Currently under construction on a site next to the pyramids of Giza, the total exhibition space will be around 40,000 square meters and will display around 50,000 objects. The building complex is intended to accommodate up to 15,000 visitors a day.

The Tutankhamun collection is one of the most precious collections in the world and will be the highlight of the Grand Egyptian Museum. For the very first time, all 5,500 objects found in the tomb will be shown together and in their original context.

 We will talk about how a classical object-oriented museum will use exhibition design and scenography to tell great stories, inspire imagination and be a fun visitor experience by engaging visitors with the stories behind the objects.

 We will also talk about how we make objects talk, how to create narrative spaces and how we achieve to communicate the fascination and story behind the myth of Tutankhamun and make the unseen seen for the visitors.

In the context of the protection of irreplaceable and priceless art and artifacts, security should have a highly preventative and proactive focus. Proactive Security for protection of cultural heritage is aimed at preventing incidents, rather than reacting to incidents as they happen. Reaction alone will always put security at a disadvantage, ergo you will always be to late to prevent it and the damage is done.

In an early stage, preferable before a museum is developed on the drawing table, the importance  of security should be addressed by all parties. Not only as means to an end, but as a philosophy on how security should be integrated in a building, in available technics, as part of the construction and even more important, as an intrinsic part of the organization. Nowadays security, next to the need for it, can be a part of the design, construction  and be integrated in a building without any visitor being aware of the existence of the security measures.

Next to new, nearly invisible, technical and constructional security solutions, I will also explain about the organizational part, being the human factor of proactive security. For instance like the developed method of HP³ (Heritage Protection Predictive Profiling).

The HP³ method is a seamless melding of the preventative focus and a client-friendly approach. In short; to prevent threats from taking place, knowledge is required about how these threats take place.  This knowledge, we call it security Intelligence, is required about the expected actions and behaviors of potential threats, and will result in information which security measures and which skills are needed to recognize suspicious indicators and differentiate between threats and non-threats.

Opened in November 2015, the Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp (fjmt) designed Warship Pavilion is a new and dramatic addition to the Australian National Maritime Museum’s (ANMM) harbourside precinct. This stunning building has been recognised with over a dozen national and international awards and in this presentation we will explore how the ANMM’s architectural solutions have played a major role in the continual rejuvenation of Australia's busiest tourist precinct - Darling Harbour. We will also explore how the unique form and function of the Warship Pavilion, emerged as a response to the Museum's need for a flexible visitor exhibition, functions and events platform. We will also discuss how the design approach for the Warship Pavilion encapsulates a critical change in direction and bold shift in the way museum's approach visitors' and their technological appetite, diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, as well as "hunger" for more immersive and sometimes more hands-on experiences.

Based on more than 26 years of international experience with museum design and exhibition design Arne Kvorning focuses on bridging the possible gaps between building architects, the museum curators and the exhibition designers. Through a selection of cases Arne Kvorning will share his experiences and challenges - working with museums and 'starchitects' ... Mind the Gap!

The Mob Museum is a world-class destination in downtown Las Vegas dedicated to providing an interactive journey through true stories of organized crime and law enforcement. It presents an engaging, creative, and authentic view of the Mob’s impact on Las Vegas history and its unique imprint on the world, while serving as an economic driver for the city. The Museum was designed by a world-class team, led by Gallagher & Associates (G&A). As President of G&A, one of the only fully integrated experience design firms in the industry, Patrick Gallagher will lead the panel in discussing how the design team worked in close collaboration with Jonathan Ullman’s Museum team to provide a comprehensive approach to the planning and design of the Mob Museum, from business, financial and operations planning, to museum planning and digital media design.

Besides the new buildings for museums with a cosmopolitan appeal, equally important museum projects as the renovation of old buildings are being created for exhibition purposes. This involves both physical modernizations of existing museum constructions as well as industrial buildings that become redesigned.  On the basis of different examples the potential and the limitations of such projects are discussed.

 The lecture focuses on a complex renovation project which encompasses a lot of changes and therefore requires a lot of adaptability. We try to accomplish this through sound project management of which the approach will be presented.

The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) houses a collection of Fine Arts from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Since the museum's building dates back to 1890, we could no longer guarantee contemporary museum standards for climate, safety and temporary exhibitions. Major renovation works were long overdue and in 2003 a Masterplan was designed. An architectural competition was organized and the concept by the Dutch architects Claus and Kaan (now KAAN) was chosen. Their concept involves both the restoration of the historical museum building and the expansion of exhibition space through newly built elements within this existing building.

In the meantime, 15 years have elapsed since the competition. The implementation of the Masterplan appears to be very complex for various reasons. On the one hand due the complexity of the renovation itself, on the other hand due to the many administrative bodies which are involved in the project. The KMSKA is part of the Flemish Government (and is placed under the Ministry of Culture) and has been designated with the role of user and not of builder. The project is on its third Minister of Culture and the museum management has been completely renewed since its inception. This results in a different policy at different levels. During the course of the project there has been uncertainty and lack of clarity about budget, quality and progress. The closure of the museum as well as the reopening has been postponed several times. It also appears that the needs of a museum which is scheduled to open in 2020 are no longer the same as the needs described in 2003.

These constant changes and uncertainties have demanded great flexibility from the different departments within the museum. Over the years we have been looking for tools that can on the one hand ensure the maintenance of the necessary flexibility and on the other provide sufficient control. A sound project manager with associated in-depth project management turned out to be a workable solution.

The City Park (Városliget), with its rich history spanning two centuries, offers a unique mixture of a 100 hectare natural green environment and institutions of leisure, entertainment and culture, closely connected to the World Heritage area of Budapest. Within the project the entire park will be completely rejuvenated, with its green area enlarged, while the institution buildings will either be renovated or newly built, to constitute a high quality, family and visitor friendly cultural site, which focuses on sustainability, high-tech solutions and outstanding visitor experience.

The project will raise the profile of Varosliget and its environs, making it one of Budapest’s leading leisure and cultural districts, and a destination renowned all over Europe.

The main elements of the development are: the New National Gallery, the House of Hungarian Music, the Museum of Ethnography, The Budapest Zoo – Biodome, The National Museum Restoration and Storage Centre (new buildings), the Roman Hall of the Museum of the Fine Arts, the House of the Millennium (renovations), the House of Hungarian Innovation, the Városliget Theater (reconstructions) and the whole park area with a complete infrastructure, IT and (public) transport system.

The presentation is how a museum has to prepare for a design and building project, and how to use the IN-USE phase for this preparation. It happens, quite often, that a museum gives commission to an architect before they even have defined the question which they are going to ask the architect and design-team. This leads to unclear budgets, exceeding budgets, and it leads to time and quality issues.
Because of the chance of insights, perspective and policies every 15-25 years the needs for the collection, visitors and the museum building is changing. The museum organisation is confronted with new legislation, different visitor numbers, new ways to exhibit, growing collection, growing staff, sustainability ambitions and so on.

This means that the museum staff has to develop new visions on lots of issues, a new definition for the building and how this building will be used. They have to find a way in which the collection, building and people are in balance.

In this presentation I will promote that the period in between building projects should be used effectively. This period in between projects is the IN-USE phase. For a museum organisation the most important phase. The Museum staff must remain active during the IN-USE phase according the balance.
Use this IN-USE phase to gather information and knowledge about the building, the people and the collection. This information is valuable input for the next project.

A panel discussion bringing together representatives from the range of stakeholders and specialists represented at IMCC 2018 to share experiences and ideas for improving communication among multidisciplinary project teams and clients/users.  Specifically, panel members will point out red flags -- indicators where things can and have gone very wrong over the course of a project-- and highlight best practices, using the experience accumulated among them to illustrate how to (and how not to) ensure that valuable input of all involved in the project is heard and addressed.