To operate within a ruin is to think in both absolute and relative terms. Its material conditions are absolute because of the spatial memory that got registered with its previous usages. It is relative on its role as an element within a larger and more complex system which is its immediate context. We understand Secovlje Salina as a landscape, not only physically but also in the collective memoir: its users may have disappeared but the architecture remains.

We cannot help but asking these two questions: if heritage´s role is to preserve and learn from history, [1] which values should be relevant besides the material memory of the object itself? If the dynamics of time do change the saline policies amongst its different agents, swapping the role of the previous supporting actor (birds) and the main characters (humans), [2] can the design actually overlap and reconcile these agencies?

Secovlje Salina hosts more than 300 different bird species. The immediate space around the ruin becomes a point of encounter for humans, fauna and flora. A new kind of node-place that densifies interaction and overlays past and present. It is an unprogrammed space, but an inhabited one.

We ought to consider heritage not from a relic point of view, not as a precious and isolated object not to be intervened; not to look at it from the outside to the inside. But to set a reference for understanding heritage as its broader implications into a contextual system -cultural and natural-, from the inside to the outside, including the ruin into the unique image of the Salina landscape and its multiple agents.