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Adam Lowe has recently joined the Advisory Council of The Watermill Center, the internationally renowned interdisciplinary laboratory for the arts and humanities founded by visionary theatre director and visual artist Robert Wilson. Wilson's pioneering work over the past five decades has profoundly influenced contemporary theatre, opera and visual art. Bringing together leading artists, thinkers and cultural practitioners from around the world, the Council supports the Center's mission to foster experimentation, collaboration and new forms of artistic practice. Adam's appointment reflects Factum's long-standing commitment to interdisciplinary research and creative innovation across art, technology and cultural heritage.
The Dream Stone Suite (Chambers Suite 166) at the St Pancras Hotel is the first of twenty rooms forming Dreaming with Culture, a new project reimagining Sir George Gilbert Scott's Grade I* listed building. It is the visionary idea of Charlotte Skene Catling (Skene Catling de la Peña), who is working with Factum Arte and Factum Foundation to link manufacture to preservation, and luxury to knowledge.
Harry Handelsman, the owner of the St Pancras Hotel, and (with the Manhattan Loft Corporation) responsible for its renaissance since 2000, has commissioned this legacy project to bring the interiors back in line with the magnificent Gothic Revival exterior.
Designed by Charlotte Skene Catling, the first suite takes chinoiserie as its subject, tracing the style's journey from seventeenth-century trade and political complexity to the grand houses of Britain. Its wall coverings reproduce chinoiserie wallpaper recorded by Factum Foundation at Saltram House, Devon, a National Trust property. Three bespoke pieces of furniture – a four-poster bed, a wardrobe and a cocktail cabinet – translate historic lacquer work from Houghton Hall, Norfolk, recorded with the generosity of the Marquess and Marchioness of Cholmondeley. The artwork was reworked onto laser-cut brass panels using elevated printing techniques developed by Factum Arte in Madrid, and the furniture was built by cabinet makers Brights of Nettlebed. A bronze lantern, developed from nineteenth-century chinoiserie designs interpreted by Factum Arte, hangs from the ceiling.
William Klein is a great photographer who loved merging paint and image. The physicality of enamel paint on contact sheets characterises his later works. His only problem was that he couldn’t do it at the scale he wanted.
For a recent project with William Klein’s estate and David Grob, Factum Arte created a series of prints of his painted contact sheets at a scale that was not possible without Factum’s combination of high-resolution 3D recording and elevated printing that can replicate both their appearance and their material characteristics.
"The death of David Hockney, the person who did most to celebrate the iPad as a creative tool, has left a real gap. Hockney has been an artist who has always been there throughout my adult life. I remember seeing his paper-pulp pools in Covent Garden in 1985, his Polaroid works at the Photographers' Gallery, his Camera Lucida drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, his sets for Glyndebourne, and his recent environments. He was a star who shone in an age of celebrity." — Adam Lowe
Paula Crown's iPad drawings are cut from a different mould, but they share some of Hockney’s merging of the photographic register and a delicate descriptive line. They have material presence, and yet they declare their origins. Paradox Cove… An informal image of a remarkable work of art generated on an iPad but materialised using Factum’s innovative printing onto mirror-polished stainless steel with satin, matte and gloss finishes.
Artist Paula Crown joined Adam Lowe for a featured conversation at the 2026 Aspen Ideas Festival, where they examined how art, technology and cultural heritage intersect in the digital age. Their session, Inanimate Imagination, explored how objects preserve memory and meaning, and how emerging technologies—from high-resolution scanning to digital reproduction—are reshaping the ways cultural artifacts are documented, interpreted and shared.
The discussion reflected the pair's longstanding creative collaboration, drawing on Lowe's pioneering work in cultural preservation through Factum Arte and Crown's multidisciplinary artistic practice. Together, they highlighted the potential of technology not simply to replicate artworks, but to deepen public engagement with history, craftsmanship and collective memory.
Factum Arte has produced Behold Humanity, Grayson Perry's new tapestry for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026. Inspired by conversations with leading figures in artificial intelligence during the filming of Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future, the work explores what it means to be human in an age increasingly shaped by AI.
Drawing on the visual language of the Orthodox Christian Epitaphios, Perry replaces traditional biblical figures with portraits of some of today's leading AI thinkers, creating a powerful reflection on humanity, technology and the body.
Behold Humanity is on view at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from 16 June to 23 August 2026.
Factum Arte worked with New York-based artist Tschabalala Self to fabricate Art Lovers, a monumental sculptural work installed on the façade of the New Museum on the Bowery as part of the institution's expansion designed by OMA.
Standing over four metres high and cast in aluminium, the sculpture depicts two figures locked in an embrace. Factum Arte's involvement spanned the full fabrication process: from detailed 3D modelling developed in close collaboration with the artist, to casting at Fademesa foundry in Madrid, to an entirely hand-painted finish in which each floral motif and surface texture was worked individually to preserve the tactile complexity characteristic of Self's practice.
The sculpture is installed at the precise junction between the New Museum's original SANAA-designed building and the new OMA expansion — a point the architects themselves have described as a "kiss point" — making Self's work both a formal and symbolic response to the architecture it inhabits.
Image © Courtesy Tschabalala Self Studio
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.
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.
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
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