Il Colosseo e le ragioni di una teoria del rilievo architettonico

'Architectural survey' is an ambiguous expression, since it contains the reference to various activities, of study, of measuring, of graphic and digital rendering, all focused on representing the current condition of a historic building with a variety of aims, which range from the simple documentation to the active restoration process. And perhaps, if this ambiguity still subsists, it may also be because we have had far too few theoretical debates on survey, whereas maybe too many surveys have been practiced, tackling the arising problems empirically. Actually, considering the current state of knowledge, and in spite of the efforts made so far , a 'theory of architectural survey' does still not exist and some people believe that it never will, being it not a science, but rather a practice used when making architecture. Others think that, exactly because it is devoid of scientific dignity, survey does not make any sense unless it is related to specific study or project purposes, contexts in which it is normally applied . We, instead, are of a different opinion, because we think that a theoretical speculation on this topic is not only useful, but necessary, and because we have verified the applicability of such theory in various study cases; one emblematic case, namely the survey of the ichnography and of part of the orthography of the Colosseum, was started in 1998 and completed two years later . We would therefore like to outline the problems that are behind such theory and to submit to discussion some solutions, as these were tried out during the above-mentioned survey.