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Prieur 
- Knowledge of the art of building 
- Skill to express knowledge through drawing 
- Know-how to transmit the knowledge of the art of building. 
But I can also see the limit of these researches crystallised in the scan. Indeed, 1 connect the position of the maximum with an 
exhaustive knowledge of the monument, a filing of all immediately useful data and of the other data researched by measure of 
precaution to the myth of Babel. 
The positive theology of the myth of Babel shows how abandoning the building became a factor of freedom and salvation allowing 
society to discover new horizons. In his work "Babel or Incompletion”, Paul Zumthor suggests that it is through incompletion that 
there is a possibility to create a new purpose, to offer the possibility for a new creation. The economy of the project beyond the 
material economy of what we can offer ourselves as knowledge of the building sets with Paul Zumthor the problem of the aptitude 
that we have to let go of the power of history on the building and give a new destiny to it. 
This is the reason why ordering a scan finds its balance between a cultural enrichment from the research and the acceptable threshold 
for incompletion that opens to the future. 
Finally I call on my fellow-members architects asking for scans, who are numerous at ICOMOS, who are numerous in our 
administrations to understand the stakes for the know-how of the profession. 
As far as ordering scans are concerned, I would have a hard time believing that architects would be contrivers of the depreciation and 
sinking of the architect's know-how. 
The experience of scanning done by Chief Architects for historical monuments ("Architectes n Chef des monuments historiques") 
showed me to which extent the "know-how", the “know-how to read" and the "know-how to express" were enriched by the way of 
going back and forth between analysis and synthesis. This dialogue brought about by this new technology is to be mastered by 
architects as well.