The National Museum of Play of the Strong

Spacesaver Protects Years of Childhood Memories at The Strong®

Posted: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:50:00 GMT

Do you remember your favorite toy growing up? As a child from the 80s my go-to toy was the Hasbro® LiteBrite.  Today, the Lite-Brite is still a popular toy and since then has transitioned into a variety of shapes and sizes. It even has its own downloadable Apple® app. Unfortunately, the original design is no longer available, but it will not be forgotten. Why? Because there are museums dedicated to the preservation of these toys, old and new. The largest can be found in Rochester, New York, and is called the The National Museum of Play® of The Strong.
At The Strong Museum, you will find a comprehensive collection of artifacts, comprised of toys, board games, dolls, electronic games, books, photographs, documents and other historical materials all related to play. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

   

Unfortunately, finding space for a collection of this magnitude and keeping it organized isn’t always fun and games. However, the Museum sought out Spacesaver to find a solution for their toy storage dilemma.

Some of the main objectives for the new storage area included:
    •    Advancing the safe storage of museum artifacts significantly;
    •    Enhancing artifact storage and accessibility; and,
    •    Improving the functionality of storage to support active museum acquisitions for the foreseeable future.

After much planning, The Strong Museum decided on Spacesaver’s mechanical-assist mobile storage system with 4-post shelving, pull out drawers and cabinets. Plus, an aisle of double-sided, mobile art racks for historical paintings and signage. During installation, staff inventoried, re-housed and tagged each collection item in preparationfor relocation to one of the three new storage areas. In all, over 175,000 items were inventoried and/or moved on... I bet the original LiteBrite was one of them.

This story was originally posted on Spacesaver.com by Kacy Hack on December 11th, 2012.

Seattle Seahawks Equipment Storage

Pete Carroll continues to drive home the “get with his program” message to the players at training camp. Meanwhile, Chris Mortenson, Senior Analyst from ESPN, and Seahawks’ Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck take a stroll through what has to be one of the nicest practice facilities in the league.

Part of that facility’s aesthetic and organizational qualities can be directly attributed to the Spacesaver experts who helped the team handle the extensive amount of equipment they needed to store and have great accessibility to. As Mort tries to convince Matt he’s deserving of a team hat as part of his “On The Road To Camp” feature on ESPN, we realize this isn’t the first time we’ve talked about this particular storage system; the media’s shown it several times… so it begs the question, why are we seeing so much of this?



As you’ve seen on this very blog site of late, we’re excited about the new opportunities in the athletic storage arena, partly because we’re dominating the field, and also because we’re a perfect pick for the challenges sports facility planners and designers face. Simply put, all facets of the design community are starting to realize the benefits of lowering their footprint and designing for accessibility, and the sports industry has been searching for these kinds of storage solutions for quite a while.
So we hope Pete gets his message across in Seattle, and our message reaches the other athletic facility managers out there looking for the absolute best storage system they can implement. In fact, if you are one or know one, go ahead and share this blog or the many others here – I’d love to write some more, and ESPN apparently would too.

Story originally posted on Spacesaver.com by David Potter - Storage Specialist

How Do You Stuff a 10 Ton Dinosaur Into a Compact Mobile System?

--- One bone at a time!  That's how!
When the head of the Anthropology department for The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago approached Spacesaver with this mammoth question, we had the answer!
The Field Museum partnered with Spacesaver when they began planning for their $65 million state-of-the-art Collections Resource Center (CRC).  A unique mix of specialized storage solutions was engineered to protect and safely store their one-of-a-kind collections; from specially designed High Density Mobile Storage (HDMS) systems to fixed shelving of virtually every grade, style and load capacity; as well as trays and cabinetry for the smaller skeletons, and heavy-duty cantilevered shelving for oversized pallets of fossils.
Spacesaver's customized storage solutions met The Field Museum's intricate and challenging needs, allowing them to break new ground with a modern facility which sets the standard in museum collections and research.

"It's clear we made the right choice given the end result, which is a unique solution ideally suited to our collections."
       Scott J. Demel, Ph.D.    
       Dept. of Anthropology

Let Spacesaver partner with you, and provide a storage solution for your extinctive .... Uh, I mean ... distinctive museum collections!

Originally posted on Spacesaver.com by Ronald Chisholm, P.E. - Storage Specialist

Library Book Stacks Can Be Cool!

No one in their right mind thinks library bookshelves are cool. I mean never. Right? Well, if you see the Seattle central library you’re apt to change your mind, and in the most severe cases, feel the urge to schedule an appointment with a therapist.

But before you fall into the insane concept that a bookshelf is cool, let’s put things in perspective. This particular library is one of the coolest buildings on the planet. Here’s the link if you’ve never seen it.

And whether you bother to click on the longest link known to man or not, let’s just agree that boring wasn’t written into the architectural specifications when it came to bookshelves at this phenomenal work of art. Instead, they had to play off of the use of light since it’s a critical design element of the award-winning building design.

To do that, the static shelving systems throughout the library are decked out with translucent acrylic materials to make the most of natural light that shines through the building’s glass envelope. The acrylic end panels and canopy tops create an especially stunning effect when natural light is combined with custom overhead lighting on each shelving unit. The cutting-edge, upbeat look and feel is also captured from all angles, including upper levels of the facility.






Originally posted on Spacesaver.com by Mike Grennier - Storage Enthusiast