The Paper Store

IWM’s Duxford Paper Store safeguards one of the world’s most significant wartime collections. Located within a highly sensitive heritage site, its oxidised steel façade marks each year of archived collections from 1914 onwards, while its Passivhaus design ensures stable environmental conditions for long-term preservation, supporting IWM’s mission to document the human impact of war for future generations

Location

IWM Duxford, UK

Area

1,452 m2

Status

Completed

Year

2019

Client

Imperial War Museums

A new-build storage facility for the paper collections of Imperial War Museums (IWM) re-thinks the strategy for collections care, taking Architype’s approach for passive preservation to the next level.

IWM’s responsibility to preserve over 100 years’ worth of collections for future generations in the best possible environmental conditions and in line with the highest standards of best practice was the catalyst for commissioning the new building. The new facility will bring together over 14,000 linear meters of IWM’s collections into one central repository on the historical conservation area at IWM Duxford. The new store will hold one of the world’s most important collections of artworks, photographs, letters and diaries covering the history of warfare during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The new facility is designed to provide for up to 30 years’ expansion of IWM’s unique collections, which tell the human stories of lives engulfed in war and show how conflict has shaped the world in which we all live. The innovative new building will support IWM’s mission to preserve these stories and help future generations to better understand the causes, course and consequences of war.

Architype are remarkable because of their proactive, flexible approach to developing low-cost, high quality solutions. Their enthusiasm to partner with our team has resulted in innovative and sustainable solutions that respect our historic site.

Gael Dundas, Assistant director, collections Management, Imperial War Museums

Vision

All vision

Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to update the font, size and more. To change and reuse text themes, go to Site Styles.

Add a Title

Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to update the font, size and more. To change and reuse text themes, go to Site Styles.

How can you drive down energy use through passive preservation?

Passive Preservation

Passivhaus

How can you drive down energy use through passive preservation?

Minimising equipment and maintenance

The building was originally modelled to maintain a minimum winter temperature of 13 degrees, but as the design progressed the brief evolved to require the internal temperature to be a low as possible without requiring active cooling. The result is a ‘free running building’ with no heating or cooling.

Stable passive storage

A Passivhaus strategy offered IWM an opportunity to use a low energy method that guaranteed stable environmental conditions for significantly lower running costs.

Fabric first

The single storey box form complements the existing historic buildings on the site at IWM Duxford, and at the same time has an efficient form factor in line with Passivhaus design principles.

Cost efficiency

Operational costs were substantially reduced due to lower levels of energy consumption as a result of less active equipment. Less equipment also reduces the risk of plant failure, maintenance costs and embodied carbon. Capital costs were also lower due to a reduction in overall complexity.

Passive preservation for IWM

To ensure the long-term preservation of the collections it was critical that the environmental conditions of the building remained very stable and well within the optimal tolerances for temperature and humidity.

Design

The single storey singular box form is designed to complement the existing historic buildings on the site at IWM Duxford. Though simple in form, the oxidised steel façade offers thoughtful detail, consisting of ground-to-roof panels that signify each year of archived collections from 1914 onwards. Perforations in panels denote the quantity of collected documentation, with noteworthy years around wartimes being heavily perforated in accordance with the volume collected. The plain and uninterrupted patina of the oxidised steel complements the colour and texture of the historic brickwork on the site.