Digital Resurrection

German-British historian Nikolaus Pevsner described the demolition of John Soane’s Bank of England in the 1920s as “the greatest architectural crime in the City of London in the 20th century.” But, thanks to the work of Melissa Delvecchio—who lectured at the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art—and her team at RAMSA, Soane’s magnum opus lives on. Through a worldwide crowd-sourced BIM modeling and rendering competition, Project Soane—organized by RAMSA and Sir John Soane’s Museum and Foundation, among others—has digitally reconstructed sections of the lost bank. Working with the museum’s digital collections, participants used Soane’s original drawings to draft the building in Autodesk. The model was then opened to artists, echoing the collaboration between Soane and his renderer Joseph Gandy, best known for his fantastical watercolor interpretations of the architect’s work. Delvecchio emphasized how tradition can be combined with invention to rediscover lost classical heritage, and hopes that Project Soane, which she described as a “continued, ongoing, evolving piece of scholarship,” will serve as a model for future initiatives. Project Penn Station, anyone?