Halde Deep Archive
Records and collections kept ninety-six metres inside a mountain.
Vestland, Norway · 2013–2019
Records and collections kept ninety-six metres inside a mountain in western Norway. Three caverns hold them at a constant temperature without machinery; the only room with a view is the reading room at the portal.
The mountain as a building
Gneiss is one of the most stable materials on earth, and the rock mass around the caverns holds 8 °C and steady humidity all year. We mapped the joints in the rock before a single blast and set the three caverns, each 22 metres wide and 140 metres long, along the strongest bands. Inside, the archive floors stand free of the rock, so air moves on all sides and water has nowhere to collect.
A blade at the portal
From the fjord road, the archive is a single board-marked concrete blade cantilevered from the cliff, eleven metres beyond the rock face. It holds the reading room, the conservation labs and the staff rooms: the parts of the building that need daylight. From the blade a lift shaft drops ninety-six metres to the halls, and a 1.3-kilometre tunnel winds down to them at a gentle gradient for vehicles and the largest objects.
We did not design the climate. We found the rock that already had it.
Built to be left alone
The halls need no cooling and very little heating. Their systems are duplicated, their power comes in by two routes, and the doors are sized for the longest object in the collection, not for people. The archive is designed for a working life of two hundred years.
Images: Instinctual Group.
