The image of rock-cut habitat in Cappadocia between scientific documentation and experience of place

This article constitutes a reflection on the landscape and the rock-cut habitat of Cappadocia, a World Heritage Site since 1985, and on its role as a dynamic and “living” cultural heritage, starting from a retrospective analysis of the activities of survey, drawing and documentation carried out personally in the Göreme site over the past few years. First, it presents the unique features of the rock-cut habitat, in terms of collective, spontaneous artifact, of relationships with the territory it belongs to and of intangible qualities that are connoting it as a place and not only as a collection of spaces. Then, starting from the description of the survey of the Karanlık kilise monastery in the Open Air Museum, it focuses on questions about knowledge and representation that emerged during the activities. It discusses the rock-cut habitat reception through both direct experience, which may be either passive or active, and the mediated experience provided by drawings and photographs. Then it discusses the role of the architect-surveyor in the formation of knowledge itself, in the context of the operational opportunities offered by digital technologies according to the specific case of rock-cut architecture. In particular, it highlights the growing centrality attributed to the machine, intended as the sum of mechanical and digital tools adopted, and suggests two complementary tools, the drawing from life and the design approach, that can be useful to stress the direct experience of space, in order to communicate it with a human point of view and to include the qualities of place in the architectural representations.