The Preservation Stack
As-built
As-built documentation records a work as it finally existed — as distinct from the work as it was designed, quoted, or imagined.
The term comes from the building trades, where drawings are revised after construction to show what was actually built, every substitution and site decision included. The gap between designed and built is not a failure; it is the normal residue of making. Engineering changes, venue constraints, rehearsal discoveries, and load-in improvisations all move a work away from its drawings, and only a deliberate act of re-documentation closes the distance.
For permanent buildings the as-built is a convenience; for temporary constructions it is the only true account there will ever be. A set, an installation, or an exhibition architecture exists briefly and is then dismantled or destroyed; drawings made to win a bid or brief a workshop describe an intention, not the object. If nothing is drawn after the fact, what is archived is the plan for a thing rather than the thing.
As-built discipline requires measurement and verification against the physical object, dated and versioned drawings so that states can be told apart, and honesty about what was not verified. Its beneficiaries are concrete: a revival rebuilding the work, a venue adapting it, a researcher establishing what an audience actually stood inside.
First published 18 July 2026 · Revision 1 · Substantive changes to this entry are dated here.