Hi Robb, I know the last person you want to hear from at this point is a consultant, but I've got a good, free solution (or at worst, low cost solution for you). The LORD book, the Manual of Museum Planning, has a chapter called "The Functional Program or Brief" (chp 16) that will take you through the process of designing a functional program specific to your new building. I'm sure the book is available at the library and if you have a little more time than money at this point, you can go to www.lord.ca and look at some of our experience records for Functional Programs and see how other museums have used the functional planning service. You can always contact Catharine Tanner, LORD's Principal of Facilities Planning and she would be able to discuss some of those projects in greater depth. Hope this is helpful to you and good luck, Joy Bailey Consultant LORD Cultural Resources Tel: 202-842-2992 Fax: 202-842-3322 1225 Eye Street, Suite 100 Washington, DC 20036 "Bringing a World of Experience to Museums and the Arts." -----Original Message----- From: Robb Teller [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 3:15 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Architectural Building Programming Request Hello, I would like to make a request to the helpful folks of Museum-L. I am the interim deputy director for a state owned museum that is undergoing a very large capital improvement project. In fact, our existing museum is being replaced by a new 60,000 sf building. Because we are a state agency, we have some interesting constraints on our project. An important one is that the architecture firm for the new building was chosen with little input from the museum and has no experience designing museums. The firm, however, is competent and well-respected...and anyway, there's nothing we can do to change it. As part of the planning for the new building, we hired a consultant to create a "building program," which was intended to show the architect the museum's vision for the future building. The final report from the consultant was informative, but it seems to have raised far more questions than it answered. Much of the blame is ours. Because we've never specified a new museum building before, we put a little too much trust in the consultant and weren't specific enough in defining his scope of work. As a result, he gave us exactly what we asked for, which isn't particularly useful. We don't have the time or money to engage this or any other consultant to help us communicate our needs to the architect, who frankly doesn't know what questions to ask. In summary, we're kind of boiled in our own pudding here, and people are starting to shout at each other. What I think might help us is if we take the work the consultant did and revise it into a better building program document to give to the architect. I've searched a few libraries to find any published examples, but have come up empty. I was sort of hoping that the Smithsonian museums might have been required to put theirs in the archives, but I haven't located them yet... Finally, my request: Do any of you have examples of excellent building programming documents that you could share? Do you know of any links or locations of publicly available building programming documents? Any good books or resources on building programming for museums that you've read? Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Sincerely, Robb Teller ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes). ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).