ABSTRACT
Architecture and conservation are perceived in the contemporary Western world as disjointed, even entities. Instead they need to be merged into a hyphened practice of built conservation, moving beyond a mere juxtaposition of neighboring fields. A critical revisiting of the Renaissance concept of restoration adds to a present attempt at opening up the question of built conservation, as an alternative paradigm, to critically inform contemporary theory and practice for the renewal of mnemic buildings. The concept of restoration embodied in the Renaissance renovation of St. Peter's assumed an opposite significance to that attributed to this notion in contemporary western theory and practice. An architectural-conservation drawing should be interpreted as a phenomenological manifestation of time like the walls of an historical city carrying the traces of its transformations, and forming a contiguous imagery reminding of the work of contemporary American photographer Robert Heinecken and his 1989 Recto/Verso Cibachrome photograms overlays.
