Raise the curtain on more storage capacity

FRANKFURT, Germany - Feb. 3, 2025 - PRLog -- The Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt theatre company has a collection of around 40,000 costumes. The theatre has now expanded its collection of props with a special construction based on pallet racks for one section, the storage of repertoire costumes. Clothes rails are mounted on the shelf supports so that the costumes can be stored hanging on coat hangers. By using the shelves, the costume department can now store costumes more effectively in the expanded storage area.

The costume department produces an average of 2,000 costumes per season. For reasons of space, costumes from productions that have already been shown or from plays that will not be performed again until a later season are stored in the costume warehouse in Frankfurt's Osthafen area. The costumes were temporarily stored on mobile clothes rails in a newly acquired storage area on the fifth floor of a former mill. However, this meant that the clothes could only be stored on one level and the space was not used effectively.

In order to obtain more storage capacity, the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt therefore decided to replace the coat racks used to date with shelving units that would allow storage on two levels, given the height of the room. A particular challenge was accessing the fifth floor: It is only possible via a lift, and a narrow staircase. Therefore, no component of the racks was allowed to be longer than four metres.

OHRA adapted its standard pallet racks to the individual wishes and circumstances of the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt: The rails on which the coat racks are mounted are 3.9 metres long. Each shelf can be individually adjusted in height in 100-millimetre increments, independently of the adjacent shelf on the other side of the shelf. With a load capacity of 1,000 kilograms, the shelves can bear costumes in the total weight of 50 kilograms per meter safely. The uprights or frames of the shelving units are 2.88 metres high, thus enabling the height of the room to be used to full effect. OHRA also customised the depth of the shelves to 700 millimetres to meet the requirements of the stock. Chipboard can be placed on the supports to protect the costumes underneath from dust. All components of the shelves can be dismantled again at any time without being damaged, for example when moving to a new location.

The new shelving system has increased storage capacity by 50 per cent in the same amount of storage space. Furthermore, the mobile coat racks that were previously used to store the costumes are now available again for their original purpose – transporting the costumes.

Visit: https://www.ohra.de/branchen/opern-theater