The Harry Ransom Center
Project Stats
- Location
Austin, Texas
- Size
235,000 SF
- Role
Programming
Architectural Design
- Market
- Expertise
Planning the future
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin is an internationally renowned research library and museum, which provides unique insight into the humanities with collections related to literature, the performing arts, film, photography and art, as well as the creative process behind these materials. To advance the Ransom Center’s mission of encouraging creativity and discovery, the team led a strategic master plan and collection storage analysis. This included a detailed space program with technical criteria and a concept design for the renovation and expansion of the facility to accommodate the next 20 years of collection and program growth.
Preserving the past
The Ransom Center’s holdings include nearly 1 million books, more than 42 million manuscripts, 5 million photographs, and 100,000 works of art. As part of the master plan, a newly expanded conservation facility was proposed to allow the Ransom Center to provide state-of-the-art treatments to its collection materials. In addition, the master plan defined secure preservation environments customized to each of several different categories of collection material — including books, archives, manuscripts, photographs, film, and costumes — in order to protect and extend the life of its valuable artifacts.
Other project components include an atrium created within the existing building envelope that allows the center’s collection storage and conservation spaces to be visible to the public, the modernization of building systems to support collection preservation, proposals for the enhancement of public, outdoor, and staff spaces, the provision of flexible workspaces, and improvements in building connectivity.
This project was completed by Cooper Robertson prior to its acquisition by Corgan in November 2025.
