Conservation and new uses in the space of the holy

The change in use of Christian religious buildings raises various issues, and establishing a context for them means dealing with core conservation themes while at the same time examining the relationships between shape and content in architecture. For several decades, the debate around this subject was focused on the dichotomy between figurative and historical (material) values. Today, theoretical reflection vacillates between the pre-eminent attention paid to the architecture itself, and to the meanings that we can derive from it. Confronting the issues that arise from proposals that show new weak functions conflicting with strong ancient symbols, the solutions, yet again, must not derive from the uncertain path of extra-architectural significance, but in the potential for the building itself to show its own specific essence. If it is true that architectural questions from the past reach us as answers through their objectivation, our answers, to retain credibility, should not avoid the need to build a deep relationship with that same physicality.