Heritage Terminology: Definitions & Contradictions

Starting Point

Conservation work runs on words that sound settled and are not. Restoration, rehabilitation, integrity, authenticity: each carries several definitions depending on which charter, standard, or authority is being cited, and the differences change what gets done to a building. Practitioners tend to absorb one version and proceed as though it were the only one.

Integrated Strategy

Definitions were drawn from more than twenty key texts and coded by acronym, then set against one another so the contradictions were visible rather than resolved. The booklet was conceived as something to be argued with. Each participant takes a copy and marks it up, highlighting, circling, or underlining the version they favour, or writing a better one in the margin. The design serves that purpose: clean enough to keep attention on the content, produced at letter size folded in half so anyone can print and distribute it, and set in Rail, a typeface chosen to nod at the historical material it carries.

Lasting Impact

The booklet turns a technical vocabulary into a conversation, and gives a room full of people a way to find out they have been meaning different things by the same word. It is a small object with a specific use: getting shared language agreed before decisions about a building depend on it.