Museums Connect Without Borders is a solidarity project organized by ICOM COMMS that supports museum professionals working under conflict, sanctions, or political isolation through a series of digital webinars, which will result in an open-access multilingual toolkit.

The project’s third webinar, Emergency Conservation Practices, took place on 20 August 2026, bringing together experts in emergency conservation, disaster risk management, cultural first aid, and architecture. ICOM ARCHI-TECHS contributed two of the session’s presentations, both looking at how museum architecture can respond to conflict, environmental risk, and uncertainty, while supporting the protection of collections, cultural heritage, and communities, drawing on experiences from Iran and Vietnam,one under war, the other under flooding.

Yasaman Esmaeili, architect, educator, founder of Studio Chahar, and a board member of ICOM Archi-Techs, presented Museums Under Fire, based on a survey of more than 25 museums affected by the recent conflicts in Iran. Her talk looked at the lessons learned from these conflicts for protecting collections, buildings, and shaping and planning for storage spaces.

©Yasaman Esmaeili

Hoang Le, architect and founder of Le Studio Architects (LSA) and lecturer at Hanoi Architecture University, presented the Vũ Dân Tân Museum in Hanoi, a museum built where flooding is a normal part of the site rather than a rare event. He showed how the building’s own design does much of the protective work, through elevating spaces, separating functions, and planning for recovery.

©Hoang Le

©ICOM COMMS

©ICOM COMMS