Restoring a building and designing a new city are, at bottom, the same question: how do you design a place so people inhabit it better — just applied to different timeframes.
Santiago Caprio works as a cultural heritage expert for UNESCO, a role where institutional authority is put to work in service of conserving the built heritage.
Restoration of the Iglesia El Rosario — San Salvador
One of the projects that best sums up this work is the restoration of the Iglesia El Rosario in San Salvador, covered by El Salvador’s Ministry of Public Works. The heritage conservation approach applied here doesn’t treat the historic building as a piece frozen in time, but as a place that is still inhabited — and that therefore needs to be designed, with the same design thinking as a new project, so it keeps fulfilling its role in the life of the city.
This work connects to the rest of the practice: the same eye that restores a colonial church is the one that designs an ephemeral pavilion or plans a city. The underlying question doesn’t change.
Inquiries about heritage and restoration projects: mail@santiagocaprio.com