A climate-controlled vault for the musical heritage of a continent.
The scheme provided a climate-controlled, secure and fire-safe environment to contain the entire musical assets held by the Universal Music Group within Europe, collating catalogues from up to ten different archives across the region. The assets came in a huge variety of formats - vinyl, DAT tapes, CDs, reel-to-reel of numerous sizes, DLT tapes, VHS tapes and other electronic media - each with its own preservation needs, all to be housed under a single, precisely controlled roof.
The facility was contained within a six-level steel frame structure, over-clad with a fire-rated system to provide a high standard of fire resistance. Alongside the asset chambers, the build included welfare facilities, 185 square metres of office accommodation, and five recording studios from which the digital remastering of assets could be carried out. In total, 1.5 million assets were housed within the facility and safely stored under ideal climatic conditions, with both temperature and humidity controlled within finite parameters.
A single multidisciplinary team, from concept to completion.
Osborn Associates provided a fully multidisciplinary consultancy service on the scheme from concept to completion. The role spanned principal contractor, space planning, detailed building services design, fire engineering, procurement, project management, cost management, site management, and commissioning and testing - a breadth of responsibility that placed the entire delivery of the vault in a single pair of hands.
The building services were engineered around the exacting demands of asset preservation. The asset chambers were held at 18°C to within one degree either side, with humidity maintained at 40% to within five per cent, served by fresh air ventilation throughout and monitored remotely via a Trend controller. Vertical transportation moved both staff and assets between the six levels, a gaseous fire protection system with six directional valve systems safeguarded the collection, and a lighting control system reduced energy consumption. Security systems were extended into the donor building to bring CCTV, intruder alarm and access control across the whole facility.
Exacting environmental control on a structurally demanding fit-out.
Two challenges defined the project. The first was structural: supporting over 450 tonnes of steelwork, plus the fit-out systems and the assets themselves, off the existing warehouse structural flooring - and doing so in a stable, compliant manner within a building never designed for such loads. The six-level steel frame had to carry both the mobile shelving and the collection it held without compromise.
The second was environmental. Controlling the internal conditions to the very exacting standards of the client brief - temperature to within a single degree, humidity to within five per cent - across chambers holding 1.5 million irreplaceable assets left no margin for drift. Delivering both, on a £3.45m scheme completed on-site in just 14 weeks, called for the full breadth of the company's disciplines working as one.
