maam2025buildingmuseums

As experienced capital project professionals, we know that the successful project balances program, schedule, and budget. We know that comprehensive planning during the pre-design and schematic phases is an investment that controls costs during construction and occupancy. We know how to engage stakeholders in all phases of project development. We are vigilant about keeping our eyes on the prize.

After we open our needed and well-planned facilities, a new type of discovery unfolds as our buildings and landscapes are handed to visitors, staff, collaborators, collections, and communities. Sometimes, we delight in happy accidents: spaces, finishes, and systems that facilitate unplanned activities in mission-advancing ways. Other times, we realize blind spots in our planning process: Facilities that interrupt smooth operations. Daylighting these situations is a resource to projects still on the boards. As one of last year's Lessons Learned panelists said, "We made these mistakes so you don't have to."

Project professionals who helped open facilities at institutions that have been critically acclaimed will generously share with the Building Museum community unexpected delights and challenging conditions encountered in the years since their world-class spaces opened to the public. Panelists will explore the opportunities and challenges, the resources deployed to advance or mitigate these conditions, and future institutional plans, all in the context of how this work allows their museum to serve its audiences. A discussion among the panelists and the moderator will delve deeper into the applicability of these lessons learned to the museum building projects at large.

Learning Objectives

1. Build operational planning into the design and construction process
   
2. Partner with client team members, at all levels of the institution, to secure a balance for vision, design, construction, and operations
   
3. Apply tested strategies for resolving post-occupancy challenges
   
4. Develop individual building components in relationship to an institution’s overall comprehensive plan
   

The Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums (MAAM) is excited to announce this year’s Building Museums™ Symposium’s Buildy Award. The Buildy Award recognizes museums’ leadership and exemplary accomplishment through the planning, construction, and life after opening of a museum renovation or building project. The award recognizes the museums as an institution, their directors and staff, and the building/design construction teams whose completed museum construction projects demonstrate high achievement in the lessons of the Building MuseumsTM Symposium: careful, creative planning and diligent implementation leading to institutional sustainability.