Virtual Reconstruction of Real Architecture: A Revitalisation and Global Awareness Project in the Net 
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A particularly significant case is that of religious buildings, designed to meet very specific needs, that determines their shape as well 
as how they were built and used. These are buildings that are often located in remote areas that are difficult to reach. For these 
buildings the lack of use, in other words the lack of worship, means (apart from exceptional buildings, which in many cases still 
suffer the same fate), their inevitable ruin. 
An understanding of our buildings that are “out of wor-ship’’ is seen as an urgent need due to the precariousness of most of them. 
Among other reasons, this is because most of them are not documented or if they are, it is only in Catalogues of Monuments or in 
general works and the data on them is limited to a brief description with the occasional photograph and any planimetric description is 
rare as is any architectural analysis. 
This should not come as a surprise in small buildings such as hermitages or roadside chapels or shrines and even small churches, but 
seems incomprehensible in large buildings such as the Hieronymite Monastery of Armedilla, at Cogeces, or the Convent of Oreja at 
Langallo, both in the province of Valladolid and both in an advanced state of ruin. 
Unfortunately there are many buildings in this situation. In the province of Valladolid alone we have located more than 130 religious 
buildings, most of which were built in rural areas and have long since ceased to be used as places of worship. It is these which draw 
our interest and attention, due to their advanced state of ruin and lack of documentation, which is usually little more than what is 
recorded in the Catalogues of Monuments mentioned previously and in some cases not even that. 
This led us to undertake the documentation of “Religious Architecture in Extinction”, in different degrees of deterioration, ranging 
from bare remains, that make it difficult to obtain an idea of any ground plan, to those which stand precariously as a result of being 
used totally or partially for other than religious ends. 
3. THE PROPOSAL 
The project not only aims to gather records related to each building through the study of the existing bibliography but also to perform 
both adequate photographic as well as planimetric graphical descriptions, to reveal architecture and be able to analyse construction. 
This work, called ARVE - Religious Architecture in Extinction - proposes and analyses efficiency in alpha-numerical applications of 
Access relational databases as a system of documentation, related to the data necessary for formally describing (through graphic and 
photographic files), the state of the religious buildings in ruins in our province, Valladolid, as well as the building process, pathology, 
uses, history, bibliographic references, etc. In short, the aim is to document and disseminate an awareness of a heritage that is on the 
road to disappearing in spite of having been (due to the activities performed there), a constant reference in the daily lives of our 
peoples and cities. 
In our country the efforts of the Regional Government of Andalusia are especially relevant and illustrative thanks to the setting up of 
the Andalusian System of Historical Heritage Information (SIPHA). This establishes a model to be followed in the way the procedure 
is handled in terms of the awareness, dissemination and conservation of heritage, at the same time as it exemplifies the development 
of a suitable method for organising efficient information on heritage and therefore its understanding.