Episode #5

Jorge Otero-Pailos, Director of Columbia GSAPP’s Historic Preservation Program, speaks with Carlos Bayod Lucini and Adam Lowe of Factum Arte. Based in Madrid, London and Milan, Factum Arte was founded by Lowe and has become internationally renowned for setting new standards in digital documentation and redefining the relationship between originality and authenticity. Lowe and Bayod Lucini jointly taught an advanced studio in Historic Preservation at Columbia GSAPP in the Fall of 2016, which involved the documentation of the medieval church of San Baudelio de Berlanga in Spain, as well as some of its paintings in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters.

They discuss the need for teaching students not only practical skills but also a conceptual understanding of how new technologies can be applied, the importance of recording of artefacts during times of peace, and Factum Arte’s work in creating of the first high resolution digital record of the Tomb of Seti I in Luxor, Egypt:
“…the Valley of the Kings was designed to last forever, but never to be visited…”
– Adam Lowe

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Read the transcript.