Scan The World

Cultural heritage

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Previous projects

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Previous projects

A World of Fragile Parts, La Biennale di Venezia

Ernest Bevin

Northbank Festival

Réunion des Musées Nationaux

Saatchi

Manchester MOSI

Imperial War Museum

Scanathons

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A World of Fragile Parts, La Biennale di Venezia

In ‘A World of Fragile Parts’, La Biennale di Venezia and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) explore the threats facing the preservation of global heritage sites and how the production of copies can aid in the preservation of cultural artifacts.

Ecological uncertainty, violent attacks, and the increasing demands of tourism are just a few of the factors putting global heritage sites and cultural artifacts at risk of destruction and loss. Copies and scans have emerged as a way of mitigating risk by providing valuable records of culture, and offering alternatives for a demanding public who want to experience historical sites and objects first-hand.

Museums have a long history of producing copies. In the 19th century, the V&A led an effort to produce and display plaster casts of significant works of art for the benefit of art students and local audiences who could not travel to important sites across Europe and its purpose built Cast Courts in the Museum still remain open today. Cast collections proliferated throughout Europe and America as an educational tool. However, in the early 20th century, attitudes towards the value of copies shifted, and many of these collections were discarded.

For the cast collections that survived however, a new value emerged: preservation. Through decades of careful conservation, museum casts have outlasted many of their originals, which have either been destroyed by war, or degraded through circumstance. These casts are now the prime transmitters of precious knowledge and culture.

With the emergence of new scanning and fabrication technologies, there is a renewed effort to preserve through copies. With that comes a host of difficult questions: What do we copy and how? What distinguishes a bad copy from one with lasting value? What is the relationship between the copy and the original in a society that privileges authenticity? And how can such an effort be properly coordinated at a truly global and inclusive scale?

-Brendan Cormier

Morehshin Allahyari

Zamani Project

David Gissen

New Palmyra Project

Project Mosul

Scan The World

The Other Nefertiti

Forensic Architecture

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The digitizing and fabrication of Ernest Bevin

The Ernest Bevin 3D printed Bust was created by Scan the World for part of the Bevin Court Community Court Restoration, a project organised by the Islington Museum with funding given by the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2014. Bevin Court is a housing area and building in Islington that was completed in 1954 and remains a residential area today. Ernest Bevin (9th March 1881-14 April 1951), who the court is named after, was a trade union leader, a Labour politician and a statesman.

There had been a bronze bust of Ernest Bevin which was created in 1954 and placed at the main entrance of the court. Unfortunately by the 1990s the bust had been removed, of which the circumstances are still unclear. With the restoration project however, Scan the World was able to 3D print a copy of Ernest Bevin’s bust.

So how did we manage to create a 3D copy of the bust if the original had been removed? Luckily a number of busts of the Trade Unionist still survived. One had been made in 1929 for the Trade and General Workers Union (later becoming Unite the Union in 2007) and is located at their head offices in Holborn. The second bust was made in 1953 and given to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.The third existing bust sits in Tooley Street and was unveiled in 1955. All of the busts are very similar, with the Trade and General Workers Union badge worn on the left side of the Bevin being a common feature, something which the original at Bevin Court also had. The original bust in Bevin’s Court had a strand of hair over Bevin’s right brow like the one in Holborn, so that was the one that was scanned and used for creating the 3D version.

The bust at the head offices of Unite the Union was scanned using a digital camera using a process called photogrammetry and through using CAD (computer aided design) software, two small versions of the bust were created first to ensure that the Bevin Court community were happy with the design. Once approval was made, the real bust was printed in parts because of its large size (over 60cm tall). Pieced together like a puzzle, the edges were polished and then the bust was coated in real bronze by our studio artist Sarah. To see a timelapse of the process click here! It was recently unveiled at Bevin Court at a ceremony on the 23rd May with other projects that have been part of the restoration. It will be displayed in Islington Museum before moving to Bevin Court.

Download the sculpture and print a mini-Ernest Bevin for yourself here!

Scanning & Fabrication - MyMiniFactory & Scan the World

Post processing and finishing - Sarah Wade

Write up from Philippa Duployen

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Imperial War Museum

A helmet often has a story to tell and the Imperial War Museum has taken it upon themselves to share this with everyone, especially from World War I to II and encompasses wars across France, England, Germany and Prussia.

Scan the World was invited to collaborate with them in creating 3D prints of the hats and helmets so it can be transported beyond the walls of the museum.

It creates a haunting image when helmets, the very item that is supposed to protect you, is left on the battlefield - some intact and some often blown into fragments.

Let’s have a quick look at some helmets we scanned - click on the name to download and print your own helmet!

The Pickelhaube was a spiked helmet worn in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by German military, firefighters, and police. Although typically associated with the Prussian army, the helmet was widely imitated by other armies during this period.

The M15 Adrian helmet (French: Casque Adrian) was a combat helmet issued to the French Army during World War I. It was the first standard helmet of the French Army and was designed when millions of French troops were engaged in trench warfare, and head wounds from the falling shrapnel generated by the new technique of indirect fire became a frequent cause of battlefield casualties.

The World War 1 French Colonial Soldiers Helmet was introduced in 1915, it was the first modern steel helmet and it served as the basic helmet of many armies well into the 1930s. Initially issued to infantry soldiers, in modified form they were also issued to cavalry and tank crews. A subsequent version, the M26, was used during World War II.

World War 1 French Field Soldier’s Helmet - this dress hat would have been worn by a French field soldier during World War 1. The ‘field blue’ colour was the colour worn by the French soldiers at that time.

Above is a damaged German Stahlhelm Helmet. After the war farmers would collect these helmets and sell them onto (often American) soldiers who visited the site. Some soldiers would even damage the helmets further and claim them as their own to glorify their masculinity - the helmet was proof, not only of their imagination, but a reminder of the many things it has been through in an unpredictable environment.

Scan the World encourages the public to get involved with the project and help expand the archive through different opportunities, many of which are easy to do. It is through this engagement that people are able to have an active role in cultural heritage and its preservation.

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