From Architecture to Digital Preservation of Heritage and the Built Environment: The Architect’s Role in the Reality-Capture Process

Some time ago, I received a survey call about my academic path in architecture. One question caught my attention: To what extent do my architecture studies help me in my day-to-day work?

Although the answer options ranged from “not at all” to “every day,” the reality was a bit more complex.

The key is to understand that the profession of architect is not a monolith. Although it’s often reduced to the role of “designer” of our built environment, many specializations in architecture aren’t always directly tied to design. Whether through drawing, research, analysis, or the implementation of technologies, each architect contributes their vision and expertise in collaboration with the different stakeholders in the field in order to turn a project into reality.

So why choose a niche field like reality capture and the digital preservation of heritage and the built environment?

The landscape of my youth was shaped by long walks through a Laval suburb. As I grew up, I also watched buildings change and age. In particular, the (relatively young) parish in the neighborhood, which over the years hosted my elementary school’s Christmas concerts as well as several memorable events. It served as a majestic backdrop for photos of those milestone moments. On my most recent walks through the area, I no longer saw a welcoming, lively façade, but a forecourt blocked off by orange cones and safety tape, awaiting repairs. A thought came to me: what if the work didn’t happen in time? What if something tragic occurred, or rebuilding from the original 1900 plans became impossible? All we would have left of the memory of this building would be its presence in the background of our photos.

Little by little, as I discovered our heritage, I made it my mission to digitally preserve our built heritage.

Today, many organizations, citizens, elected representatives, and professionals who care deeply about heritage preservation fight tirelessly to secure dedicated funding to protect these buildings. Sometimes, several of our heritage structures end up at the bottom of the priority list, but it’s still possible to get ahead and start thinking now about their future restoration.

For my final master’s project in architecture, I chose to take my passion for heritage further by combining it with my curiosity for technology. Focusing more specifically on Quebec’s religious heritage, one realization became unavoidable: it isn’t always possible to preserve all of our heritage buildings before certain parts deteriorate too much.

The recent fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris nevertheless highlighted a path of hope. Restoration could be initiated, in part, thanks to a point cloud from a scan carried out a few years earlier. That event strengthened my conviction about the essential role technology can play in protecting our built heritage.

In this first stage of digital preservation of built heritage, the architect contributes their expertise to identify critical areas and recreate them digitally, so that the digital twin can be mobilized during future work. By combining this expertise with mastery of technology, the architect selects the most relevant tools and deliverables to acquire and archive high-quality data, while anticipating future needs linked to how that data will be used. The architect also ensures the building’s historical coherence throughout the digitization process and oversees how it is used.

Although I love the time spent digitally preserving cathedrals, parishes, or ancestral buildings, my role often involves supporting other architects and professionals in more pragmatic uses of reality capture. Often, the earliest phases of a project move at a very fast pace. In renovation and expansion projects, we need reliable data, and very often, we need it for… yesterday!

Whether it’s restoring a 200-year-old church or building an expansion for a school, the architect’s role in acquiring digital data at the beginning of a project is essential to start from a trustworthy baseline.

In one of my building survey courses, we learned to draw the façade of a very old building by measuring a brick and then counting the number of bricks one by one. Let’s be honest: I was clearly not going to keep counting bricks manually!

Today, my role is to support other architects in lightening their workload from the earliest phases of a project. When it comes to acquiring digital data, an architect’s knowledge is extremely valuable. Understanding the architectural project, the design process, and how it is developed allows us to choose, with precision, the technologies and methodologies needed for a complete and accurate capture of existing conditions.

The goal isn’t simply to deliver a “beautiful” point cloud, but rather to turn reality into usable data, whether in the form of point clouds, photogrammetric models, orthoimages, 3D models, or deformation analyses.

The beauty of this profession also lies in managing “imperfect realities,” whether that means verifying construction drawings against the building as constructed, or analyzing heritage structures shaped by time and deformation. It’s also an opportunity to discover, analyze, and unpack buildings whose history is no longer recorded in any drawing.

The typical architect’s path is to create drawings and then shape our built environment.

For me, it’s the reverse. It’s capturing reality, studying its history, its architectural details, its cracks and time-sculpted façades—then drawing it up and preserving it forever.