3D CRAFT: Digitally recrafting lost interiors in Britain and Ireland

3D CRAFT brings together leading heritage, conservation and research institutions in Britain and Ireland to discuss new ways of recreating and experiencing lost historic interiors. The fire at Clandon Park in 2015 destroyed one of the finest works of surface ornament of early 18th century Britain and Ireland, it has also exposed the underlying framework, allowing new insights into construction and craft processes. Using Clandon as a case-study of the problems facing heritage professionals across Britain and Ireland, this network will foster a collaborative cross-border interdisciplinary discussion around the digital processes that can capture and communicate multi-layered building fabrics in all their complexity, including virtual and augmented reality.
National Trust is the largest conservation charity in Europe with expertise in the conservation of highly significant historic buildings and landscapes. The salvage of Clandon has demonstrated this expertise and has created opportunities to pioneer new technologies. NT has a strong track record of engaging in digital technologies and has collaborated with organisations like Google to test how VR, AR and MR can widen access.
Craft Value (a four-year Irish Research Council funded project in the Department of Art History and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin) is exploring archives of buildings in Britain and Ireland that reveal contemporary building practices, including the types, numbers, skill levels, and origins of craftsmen involved, the techniques they employed, the types of materials they used and how they were sourced.
The challenge of lost 18th century interiors is familiar to the Office of Public Works who have responsibility for historic buildings with lost or damaged interiors, such as the Four Courts in Dublin. New and developing technologies, from 3D Visualisation, Photogrammetry and Augmented Reality, combined with art historical methodologies offer opportunities to virtually reconstruct this lost heritage and present it to a wider audience using sustainable digital platforms.
The network also includes experts in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Digital Humanities from University College London, King's College London, the University of Surrey, and Trinity College Dublin, who are at the cutting edge of digital visualisation.
The proposal aims for new levels of authenticity in the digital recrafting of lost and damaged interiors by retrieving greater amounts of data from photographs, film, and architectural fragments. The project will harness contemporary digital craft skills to elucidate the creative craft skills of the past, allowing them to speak to each other in a new virtual environment.
Public engagement is a core objective. The digital reconstruction of this material will facilitate new ways to enhance visitor experience at historic properties; revealing lost architecture. New technologies have the potential to allow visitors to revisit the past, to inspect architectural fragments of lost buildings in their original context and to understand the fascinating processes behind the construction of historic interiors. The craftsmen responsible for these richly ornamented historic interiors remain largely unknown to the public. This project aims to cast new light on their achievements. There is public appetite for understanding how things were made in the past, reflected in visitor numbers to heritage sites across Britain and Ireland. Digital media have the potential to highlight craft techniques that normally remain hidden under the surface, allowing them to step forward in the historic narrative.
In addition, there is scope to provide greater access to historic properties which are inaccessible to the public due to their continuing use for other purposes, for example, many prominent 18th century buildings are working government offices where visitors cannot be accommodated. Immersive 3D technologies can open such buildings up to all.

The public will be the main beneficiary of this collaboration. The aim of the project is to find more compelling ways to digitally engage people with historic buildings and skilfully crafted historic interiors, be it through more convincing reconstructions for book and web publications, online animations, TV documentaries, or through immersive experiences in augmented and virtual reality designed within game engines. At the same time the non-invasive digital processes under exploration would offer sustainable means to help preserve such important examples of cultural heritage for future generations. Digital platforms can promote heritage to new audiences and there is huge scope for increasing community education and engagement. As stated in the Pathways to Impact document, the reconstruction of lost interiors allows buildings to have a 'digital afterlife' whereby they can be explored off and on-site, using virtual or augmented reality.
Institutional networks between Britain and Ireland need to be strengthened. While collaboration and knowledge sharing continues between the National Trust and the Office of Public Works, this AHRC application represents a first joint research proposal. The National Trust is the largest conservation charity in Europe with over 5 million members; is the largest landowner and largest museum body in the UK, owns more than 780 miles of UK coastline and is a custodian of 9 World Heritage sites and more than 500 mansions castles, parks and gardens open to visitors.
In Ireland the OPW are the principal body tasked with caring, maintaining, protecting and preserving historic properties across the republic. This joint application facilitates an important cross-border conversation around digital humanities in these important institutions during a uniquely disruptive period between Britain and Ireland. Better integrated pathways of research make sense between neighbouring countries with so much shared visual culture. British and Irish architecture has generally been studied in isolation, with academic institutions ploughing parallel furrows either side of the Irish sea. Through the digital humanities we aim to cross traditional academic boundaries that have long been drawn along national lines.
In conservation practice the use of digital tools is constantly evolving. This network will be a forum for key stakeholders to have input into how such technologies develop, forming a bridge between architectural historians, conservation specialists, heritage professionals, and computer scientists working on both sides of the Irish Sea. This research collaboration has a special focus on the value of craft skills, materials and finishes, which are crucial areas for conservation in both public and private practice. In order to encourage the maintenance of the traditional craft skills necessary in heritage conservation, we must find new ways to highlight the achievements of hitherto overlooked craftsmen. The anonymity of craftsmanship, in contrast to that of patrons and architects, has diminished their visibility in historic narratives, and resulted in a general lack of appreciation of their enormous contribution.
The formation of this collaborative network, by engaging directly with key heritage bodies such as the National Trust and OPW, will help channel the benefits of research directly into the places it can have most impact, as well as exposing students and early career academics in the humanities to the ongoing changes within the heritage sector. The provision of expertly crafted and curated digital content of historic value has many applications within the commercial sphere, as outlined in the supporting documentation under Pathways to Impact.