Basel Museum: Value preservation with optimal indoor climate

Kunstmuseum Basel: The world’s oldest public art collection

The Kunstmuseum Basel is in the ‘Premier League’ of museums - It houses art treasures whose value is estimated to be between eight to nine billion Swiss francs (seven to eight billion euros). In 2013, the Times of London named it the fifth best museum in the world. The collection of the Kunstmuseum Basel now comprises around 4,000 paintings, sculptures, installations and videos, as well as 300,000 drawings and prints spanning seven centuries.

Challenge

Fundamentally, art treasures that are stored and exhibited in museums will be exposed to the risk of artificial aging and decay. Fluctuating temperatures and relative air humidity may cause damage to museum pieces. Ventilation and climate control are therefore a priority in the Kunstmuseum Basel along with the room sizes. The number of museum visitors and architectural conditions also need to be considered.

The Zurich company Bouygues Energies & Services was commissioned to update the automation solution, including in the museum’s main building. It is a global player, operating in over 80 countries and active in the areas of building technology, building management, traffic technology and energy supply technology. The company started its work on the Kunstmuseum in late 2014.

Solution

In the design of the automation solution, the Bouygues Energies & Services team relied on Priva products. Team leader Philip Jurts says: “With an eye on the technical specifications, we designed the control system with Priva components and programmed it with TC Engineer.”

This involved the use of controllers from the Priva Blue ID S-line, which communicate via a wide variety of protocols and can be connected to field equipment made by different manufacturers. Of particular benefit for renovation work is the fact that existing field equipment and cabling can continue to be used.

Result

From Team Leader Philip Jurts’ point of view, the Priva solution was convincing primarily because of the time benefits: “Priva has a wide range of tried and tested solutions. By deploying them, we were able to save time during implementation and when checking the functions on site.” From the perspective of the museum management, the use of TC Manager in particular produces important operational benefits. For example, in terms of comfort, any optimisations that are entered in the program, e.g. using graphically displayed data, will be quickly implemented and in terms of efficiency, the systems can be monitored and controlled effectively and economically.