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In 2022-2023, the City of Bruges renovated an old factory, located just outside the centre, turning it into a brand-new, state-of-the-art heritage depot, with the help of the Province of West Flanders. The Erfgoedfabriek provides the long-awaited answer to the historical need for a centralised depot for the collections of Musea Brugge, Raakvlak, the Bruges Costume Workshop and regional collections from Bruges and surrounding areas to preserve the ever-growing collections in optimal conditions for future generations.
Musea Brugge manages a collection of more than 75,000 collection objects, of which just under 10% are on permanent display. Proper depot management, therefore, is essential to our operation. Prior to the Erfgoedfabriek, our depots were spread across several historic buildings. Also Raakvlak's archaeological collection was housed in a historic building. Those buildings, while adapted to the storage needs, were difficult to access, highly compartmentalised and impossible to climate control. Moreover, the museum and archaeological collections are still growing every year. So the need for a new, spacious heritage depot with optimal furnishing and climate control, and facilities such as a treatment and quarantine room was pressing. With the Erfgoedfabriek, the City of Bruges and Musea Brugge found the perfect solution to meet the preservation needs of the region's various collections.
The old factory building received a total make-over. The building was specifically converted and equipped to examine and preserve heritage for future generations in the best possible conditions.
From the purchase, it was clear that the old factory building needed to be transformed into an optimal storage space for diverse collections, ranging from tapestries, ceramics and teacups right through to Merovingian swords and historic carriages. The Facilities Management Department (City of Bruges) was in charge of this ambitious building project and hired the architectural firm Claeys-Haelvoet for the design. They designed a building in 2019 that prioritised functionality, contemporary preservation and sustainability.
Not only the building, but also the furnishings are designed with optimal preservation in mind. The Erfgoedfabriek will be the permanent repository for many thousands of collection objects of diverse materials, shapes and sizes. That requires a unique depot interior design. For this, we partnered with the company Bruynzeel Storage Systems, which will also be furnishing the depot spaces in BRUSK.
Interior design Bruynzeel Storage Systems © Femke den Hollander
© Femke den Hollander
The Erfgoedfabriek boasts 7,355 m2 of depot and facility spaces
The Erfgoedfabriek covers a total of 7,355 square meters. The bulk is taken up by depot space, where the archaeological collection of Raakvlak and the Bruges Costume Workshop (including the costumes of the Procession of the Holy Blood and the Pageant of the Golden Tree) and later regional collections will have a new home. The largest sub-collections of Musea Brugge, namely the applied arts collection (craft and aesthetic functional objects, such as furniture, textiles and crockery) and the folklore collection, will also be housed there. Musea Brugge's most vulnerable collections (paintings and works on paper) will move to the depots in the new exhibition hall BRUSK in 2025.
Altogether, over 50,000 museum objects, 10,000 boxes of archaeological finds from Bruges and surrounding areas and over 4,000 costumes are moving to the new state-of-the-art depot.
What (partial) collections will be housed in the Erfgoedfabriek?
In addition to the depot spaces, there is also space for Raakvlak's offices and other facility spaces, including a photo studio, a quarantine room, anoxic or low-oxygen room, a cold room, puzzle room for fragments and educational space where Raakvlak can host both schools and visitors.
With the new depots and workspaces in the Erfgoedfabriek, we are taking not one step, but a giant leap in our collection management and preventive conservation. The operation that is made possible by the Erfgoedfabriek lifts the preservation and management of our collections to an international level.
Indeed, the new Erfgoedfabriek not only meets the needs of the collection objects much more efficiently, but the building makes accessibility of the collections easier. This promotes research by both internal and external scholars and leads to more knowledge about the city's and region's history. Accordingly, research and preservation are finally taken to the next level and the movable, immovable and intangible history of Bruges is safeguarded for generations to come.
The Erfgoedfabriek will not only take the management of heritage collections of Raakvlak, Musea Brugge and the Costume Workshop to the next level. The Erfgoedfabriek will also be the beating heart in terms of collection management and heritage operations in the region. A beacon with a learning network that shares information and expertise with heritage partners from Bruges and Ostend.
This is why the Heritage units of Bruges and Coastal Heritage are recruiting a project officer over the next 3 years to map collections and depot needs from the region. All municipalities in the Bruges and Ostend territory will be surveyed. The goal of this project is to combine forces with a view to addressing heritage care in the region and developing a vision for a regional collection and depot operation in which the Erfgoedfabriek will play a key role. On the one hand, this can be a service-providing role, such as providing tailored advice, training and opening the treatment room. On the other hand, the Erfgoedfabriek can also serve as (emergency) storage for collections that need to be temporarily or urgently accommodated. And not only for regional parties, but also for other city services, such as libraries or the archives.
