Museum, Library & Archive Architecture
Spaces for collections, scholarship, and discovery.
Museums, libraries, and archives must make knowledge accessible while caring for the objects and records that carry it. The right balance depends on the collection, the institution, and the people who use it. A reading room for scheduled scholars has different requirements from a classroom, a curator’s office, or secure collection storage.
CSNA begins with those distinctions. Our work at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library and the United States Olympic Committee Archives demonstrates how visual connections, carefully arranged rooms, and controlled access can support scholarship and stewardship together.
At HMML, glass walls connect teaching and scholarly activity with the reading room and curatorial spaces. Curators can observe the use of collection materials and work closely with scholars. Additional resources can come from the adjacent reference collection or from secure storage with controlled access. The arrangement makes learning visible while supporting attentive care of the collection.
At the Olympic Archives, scheduled visitors study materials in a reading room beside the Archivist’s office. Glass walls provide oversight of the reading room and collection spaces, while successive security checkpoints and a separate secured room provide different levels of protection. Sensitive climate control and waterless fire protection support the preservation of a varied collection.
HMML’s ambition was to make the study of medieval manuscripts visibly contemporary. Transparent rooms, integrated art, and connections to the forest give architectural expression to that purpose. The Olympic Archives responds to another story: the preservation and study of objects that record American Olympic achievement. Each solution follows the institution’s own mission.
Experience in practice
A director’s ambition to make historic scholarship visibly contemporary shaped spaces for learning, curatorial collaboration, and attentive stewardship.
Read the project story →
A collection celebrating American Olympic achievement called for spaces that bring supervised scholarly study and carefully controlled access together.
Read the project story →Meet the studio, explore our clients, and view recognition for our work.
Begin with your story
Tell us about your collection, who uses it, and how you would like learning and research to develop. Those questions provide a useful beginning for a library, museum, or archive project.
Discuss your project with CSNA