Atmosphere and Heritage: Documenting the architectural heritage

Often, when we choose buildings to be categorized as heritage, it is the building as a whole that calls for protection and not only some specific detail that is worth preserving. In this case, the values of the building not only relate to the tangible, physical material but also to the in-between of the materials. This is what we identify as atmosphere, an enveloping phenomenon that surrounds and affects our sensuous system and well-being when we approach, enter, stay or move in a building. When we leave the building again we carry this atmospheric multi-sensory experience with us without adequate methods to describe and document it. In this paper I will introduce both new and traditional approaches to document the architectural heritage with the final conclusion to describe both tangible and intangible values, it requires an objective and geometrical approach as well as a subjective and phenomenological approach.