Museums and Art Galleries: Making Existing Buildings Accessible

Confronts the dilemmas faced by architects and their clients in making historic buildings more inclusive in response to contemporary access standards and regulations. This book examines impartially the evidence from fourteen varied case studies to generate a set of guidelines specific to museums and art galleries. This book confronts the very significant dilemmas faced by architects and their clients in making historic buildings more inclusive in response to contemporary access standards and regulations.

Highly illustrated, closely researched and authoritative in scope, the book examines impartially the evidence from fourteen varied case studies to generate a set of guidelines specific to museums and art galleries. In six of the case studies, the story of the brief and design solutions is narrated by members of the project teams who undertook the alterations, revealing the process by which decisions were made and how the needs of disabled people were balanced with the need to preserve the historic character of the buildings. High profile projects such as the Queen's House, Greenwich, are examined in the same light as more modest ones, resulting in a valuable compendium of successful practical ideas.

This book is aimed at architects, conservationists, owners, managers and trustees contemplating the alteration of historic buildings that house art galleries and museums, and its lessons are set to become the benchmark against which future projects are judged.