73

l n troduction

Per Kåks

ICOM’s International Committee on Museum Architecture and Techniques has

inscribed programming as its main field of concern in its work plan for the period
1977-80, established in Moscow in 1977. The committee regards this as the
key to achieving better museum buildings and functions. Museums are built for
the future in order to protect the past, and as the past is always following us,
the buildings must be able to develop according to the ever-changing needs. We
are all bound by our immediate needs and the fashions of our time and our en-
vironment. We also remain firmly rooted in our different professional roles and
have difficulty in understanding the needs of others. Furthermore, we have to
work under given political, social and economic conditions.
Thus, in order to create a. museum that will meet the needs of the museum
staff and the public today, and that it will be possible to use even tomorrow,
we must make a thorough analysis of requirements and given factors. Some
requirements are axiomatic, e.g. the protection of material. In the Museum Codex,
which is at present in preparation,’ there are other similar axioms that apply over
the whole globe. But there are some requirements of both a practical and socio-
economic nature that change from time to time and from region to region: prob-
lems of climate, accessibility, acquisition policy, activities for children, etc., apart
from the eternal question of the growing needs for storage.
In this issue of Museum we will try to shed light on and illustrate the need
for programming, starting with a text on the theory by Patrick O’Byrne and
Claude Pecquet, who have both dealt at length with these problems from the
point of view of the architect and the sociologist. The articles that follow will
exemplify different ways of applying and adapting the theories in different situa-
tions and in different parts of the world, each author starting from his own experi-
ence. The authors have not followed a common model, but they all have a com-
mon awareness of the need to bring order into the mass of ideas and notions
about how to create a museum.
It is the hope of the members of the committee that the contents of this number
of Museum will find readers not only among all those who work in the museum
profession, but also among architects who are in the process of creating a museum
building, and among decision-makers and politicians.

1. By the Unesco-ICOM Documentation Centre.

14

Programming-
a tool at the service of the curator,
the commissioning uthsrity

Claude Pecquet and Patrick 0’43yrne

y should programming studies and methods be applied to museums ? To begin

with, all the work carried out in relation to a museum involves capital investment,
and in France, for example, programming studies are compulsory for all capital-
investment operations.
At this point a brief definition is called for. A capital-investment operation is
an undertaking which aims at supplying some material needs and which for this
purpose requires financial investment. ]Every such operation has to take into
account, depending on its size or aims, three main considerations : architecture,
equipment and administration.
AU three have to be taken into account simultaneously and in their entirety.
in the case of a new building. In other cases they may be approached separately
(Fig. 2).
Here are some examples of capital-investment operations : construction, renova-
tion or restoration of buildings; adaptation of buildings to new functions; installa-
tion of new equipment; restructuring, adaptation or extension of existing plant;
functional organization of new structures ; reorganization of existing structures.
These examples may be regarded as exhaustive if we also include such opera-
tions as the installation of a system of direction signs or a security system.
After this digression, we are now in a position to turn again t o programming
questions: not only why programming? but also how, for whom and by whom?
This article will attempt to answer these four fundamental questions, which
always arise when applied programming comes up for discussion. But it should
be emphasized that we are not concerned here with what is known as ‘scientific’
programming, whose aim is to define, according to a philosophical approach, the
fundamental structures of the proposed museum.
By way of preamble, let us attempt a brief answer to the four questions asked
above.
Why? To provide the commissioning authority, i.e. client (municipality, foun-
dation, ministry, etc.) with practical technical assistance, starting with a definition
of aims and continuing until the museum is finally launched in working order
by the director or curator. The object of this assistance is to make the operation
as effective as possible.
NOW? By fashioning a practical technical instrument for shaping and transmit-
ting information and directives so that they may be understood and used by com-
missioning authority, curator and architect alike.
For whom? For the commission authority, to enable him to take decisions in
full knowledge of the facts ; for the curator, to provide him with a concrete formu-