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For Zayed National Museum, which opened to the public on 3 December 2025, Factum Arte has realised an extensive body of artworks and installations now permanently on view in Abu Dhabi. Conceived as a tribute to the legacy of the UAE’s Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the museum—designed by Foster + Partners—brings together architecture, landscape and material culture at an unprecedented scale.

Between 2023 and 2025, and working under the guidance of Dr. Peter Magee and the team at Zayed National Museum, Factum Arte developed a wide range of sculptural works, reconstructions and immersive environments that give physical form to the natural and cultural histories of the Emirates. The projects were shaped through sustained dialogue with curators, historians, scientists and craftspeople, drawing on research, advanced digital technologies and hands-on making across Spain and the UAE.

From large-scale sculptural commissions to carefully researched reconstructions and immersive installations, these works explore how knowledge, memory and material can coexist in the museum space. Together they reflect years of collaboration, experimentation and commitment to making heritage tangible, legible and alive for future generations.

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We are delighted to share that Fern — the self-supporting bronze replica of the Diplodocus carnegii 20th-century plaster cast skeleton at the Natural History Museum — has been recognised at the Structural Awards 2025.

The project was celebrated for its engineering excellence, with Structure Workshop receiving the award. Factum Arte joined them on stage, represented by William Owen, who appears second from the left, standing beside Peter Laidler (far left) and Max Clatton (far right) of Structure Workshop.

This recognition highlights the ambition and complexity of the work. Factum Arte collaborated closely with Structure Workshop, Fademesa Foundry in Madrid, and the Natural History Museum to realise this 25-metre-long bronze sculpture — one of the largest and most technically demanding projects completed by our team.

The judges described Fern as “a technically challenging and beautifully executed project that demonstrates the versatility of structural engineering. The team resolved complex post-tensioning and geometric challenges with care and intelligence, creating a form that engages the public and reinforces the profession’s role in shaping imaginative, visible work.”

Installed in 2024 in the museum’s refurbished gardens as part of the Urban Nature Project, supported by the Kusuma Trust, Fern continues to welcome visitors and highlight the intersection of engineering, craft, and creativity.

More about the project

For the past two years, Factum Arte has been collaborating with Paula Crown to produce a bell that transforms text and drawings into sculptural bronze.

Inspired by Tibetan Prayer Wheels and the Japanese epigram "the reverse side also has a reverse side" (物事には裏に裏がある - monogoto niwa ura ni ura ga aru), the bell, cast in Spain in an amazing feat of bell making, explores themes of hidden complexity and layered meaning. The embossed and debossed text reads around the bell, each creating a visual and acoustic rhythm. As with most oriental bells, it is struck from the outside with either a specially-made stainless steel or wooden clapper. The sound is mesmerising, rising, falling and resonating in a hypnotic way. The Reverse Side Bell embodies themes that resonate with history, especially with the destruction of bells from during World War II.

The production of this artist bell is part of the ongoing fight to save London's Bell Foundry in Whitechapel. The bell is currently on display at Sunnylands, Palm Springs (California), a historic estate that has been a retreat for U.S. presidents and a convening place for world leaders since 1966. Since 2012, Sunnylands has hosted world leaders and experts in a range of fields to address national and international issues.

More about Paula Crown's work with Factum Arte

Photo © Braden Weeks Earp

Over the years, the tapestry created for Rachid Koraïchi's Jardin d'Afrique has been part of several exhibitions, spreading awareness about Koraïchi's non-denominational sanctuary for migrants who lost their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Sadly, this remarkable and generous work of art has recently been subjected to iconoclastic and racist attacks.

Jardin d'Afrique is currently part of the exhibition 'Shared Sacred Sites. Journeys between religions' at Villa Medici in Rome (9 October 2025- 19 January 2026). The exhibition focuses on the religious phenomenon of sanctuaries shared by worshippers of different religions in the Mediterranean. Koraïchi's tapestry is exhibited among works on loan from the Vatican Museums, the Museo Ebraico di Roma, the MAXXI, the Louvre Museum and the Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée.

It took years for the processes developed by Daguerre, Fox Talbot and Niépce to develop into the language we associate with photography. Now digital imaging has taken over. In the move from film and wet printing processes, artists are celebrating the materiality of light-based medium and pushing the boundaries.

Richard Learoyd is doing some great work in the area around Fox Talbot’s home at Lacock Abbey. The images emerging from Factum’s flatbed printer are materialised on canvas, pushed back with layers of liquid gesso, drawn and over-printed. The layered images have a subtle beauty that dissolves the artificial separation between printing and painting.

This way of working requires the artist to be present during the printing. Intuitive and spontaneous decisions need to be made. He is aided by Amanda Blázquez and Marta Collado as they work the printer and prepare the materials.

More on Richard Learoyd's work with Factum Arte

Susana Solano has unveiled PELÍCANO (2025), a table/sculpture developed as part of the Catalina D'Anglade’s ARCOmadrid Award 2024. The piece has been crafted in wood and metal with movable wings in Factum’s workshops

Solano is one of Spain's most significant contemporary sculptors and a key influence on emerging artists. Her work merges industrial materials and spatial exploration. PELÍCANO plays with the 'wings’ that can be opened on tables to accommodate more people and the memory of a large pelican at Lake Chamo in Ethiopia.

The Catalina D’Anglade ARCOmadrid Award consists in the acquisition of an artwork during the art fair by a Spanish artist or an artist working in Spain. This is followed by a commission of an object that merges art and design.

More about the project

Foto courtesy Catalina D'Anglade Art

Gaussian Splatting is a new way of creating realistic 3D images by placing millions of tiny, semi-transparent dots in space—each one holding information about colour, depth, and how it reacts to light. Instead of building objects out of sharp edges and flat surfaces, it creates soft, detailed scenes that feel more natural and lifelike. To help with this, it uses a technique called spherical harmonics, which allows the computer to simulate how light wraps around curved surfaces—like how sunlight gently fades across a face or a sculpture. This also means it can capture tricky materials like glass or shiny metal, showing reflections and transparency in ways older methods struggled with. The result is a faster, more efficient way to turn real-world photos into immersive 3D experiences. - Otto Lowe

One year ago, the bronze Diplodocus was unveiled at the Natural History Museum in London. It was probably the most complex and challenging work Factum Arte has made in collaboration with its partners at Fademesa Foundry in Madrid and Structure Workshop in London. A year on, the museum is celebrating its impact with a film featuring paleontologist Paul Barrett.
Video © Natural History Museum, London

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More about creating Fern