Digitizing Architectural Drawings: CRUSE Scanning for the Tchoban Foundation

The Tchoban Foundation is a museum in Berlin dedicated to architectural drawing since 2013. Founded by architect Sergei Tchoban, the institution regularly presents changing exhibitions drawn from renowned institutions and private archives, as well as its own collection. The collection spans works from the 16th century to the present — historical design drawings as well as contemporary work.

What these sheets have in common is that they are one-of-a-kind. No design can be redrawn later, and no line can be reproduced. That is precisely why recom art care regularly collaborates with the Tchoban Foundation to digitize parts of the collection.

Architectural drawings differ from other art forms in their carrier material. Many were created on thin paper, tracing paper, or card — materials that rarely lie perfectly flat after long periods of storage. Waviness, curling edges, and old creases are common.

For color-accurate, razor-sharp digitization, the original must lie flat. Ideally, this should be done without applying mechanical pressure to delicate graphite lines, ink strokes, or watercolor areas.

This is exactly where recom art care comes in with the CRUSE scanner. The device’s vacuum table draws the original toward it through a fine grid of holes. This gently flattens the artwork for a brief moment—without clips, without tape, and without applying pressure to the drawing surface itself. This allows slightly wavy sheets or those curling at the edges to be secured for scanning without touching or putting strain on the surface.

The scanning process itself is then carried out just as it would be for any other document on the CRUSE: contactless, line by line, at a precise 90° angle, with uniform LED lighting that contains no UV light. The result is a color-accurate, high-resolution digitalization of the drawing—serving as an archival-quality basis for exhibition catalogs, publications, or the long-term preservation of the collection.

For institutions like the Tchoban Foundation, digitization is an essential part of collection management. A scanned drawing reduces the need to repeatedly handle the fragile original. Recom art care follows the principle: as little contact with the original as necessary, as much care as possible.

Would you like to have drawings, sketches, or plans from your collection digitized? We look forward to receiving your inquiry and will handle it personally.