Unwrapping Heritage | London, UK | Unit 21 | 2022

m.petalidou.16@ucl.ac.uk


Unwrapping heritage proposes a thematic garden of unwrapped artefacts where one can experience their aura through architecture. The design is based on 3D scans of artefacts taken from the British Museum during the last months. The scanned models are cut, unwrapped and rewrapped to create new spatial forms that generate a landscape that reflects not only the qualities of the artefacts themselves but also the stories behind them.

The British Museum becomes an open thematic garden that can be accessed from all three surrounding streets through garden pathways. An Egyptian-inspired garden with an irrigation system and tomb-like underground galleries, a vivid Indian flower garden, a tea room, a long Greek exhibition gallery, a colossal Roman centre for digital fabrication and conservation, Benin pavilions for indoor and outdoor events and concerts, a hanging Babylonian Garden, an Assyrian auditorium, a lavender garden and an archive with servers that digitally conserve the 3D data of cultural heritage around the world. In an era where the digital is merging with the physical, the information behind cultural heritage is a starting point to create a modern pleasure garden of artefacts.


Plan View of Garden of Artefacts

The new scheme is situated in the location of the British Museum and it is built out of the dismantled BM building material.

The Unwrapping Process of the Scanned Artefacts

40 of the most debatable and viewed artefacts of the BM are used as a design material through the process of unwrapping and rewrapping in order to create a new landscape

Egyptian Grid Garden and Gallery


Archive drawings

The archive safeguards the digital information behind all cultural heritage artefacts on 4 floors of data servers.