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The role of the audience in re-manufacturing built heritage sites and formulating their conservation policies has often been outlawed by the full control of the site authority through its singularity in formulating these policies. Excluding the locals from efficient participation in setting up these policies is usually attributed by the authority to the vague role that they would precisely play. However, the rich body of ICOMOS Charters and UNESCO Conventions has frequently considered the locals as "real custodians" of these sites, legitimising their participation in drawing up heritage conservation policies. This is due to the diverse cultural potential that can be made by them for the conservation policies of these sites. This paper investigates the precise role that the audience can demonstrate within re-manufacturing heritage and constructing its futuristic policies. It is indicated that the audience"s views possess different motives culturally, historically and touristically that enable them to efficiently participate in re-manufacturing the architectural heritage of their traditional environments. Therefore, the public"s deep experience towards their heritage issues can revive the site with some practical ideas stemming from its reality.

The concept of identity is complex and at the same time ambiguous. Architectural identity, however, is even more complex. This stems from the fact that architecture is the mirror that reflects the different political, cultural, social and economic factors that are shaping the city.In this research, Khartoum, the capital of Sudan is chosen as a case study to explore its contemporary architectural identity. Initial findings from interviewing different parties in the city including architects, academicians and planners highlighted the significant conflict in expressing the Sudanese architectural identity in the contemporary architecture. This resulted in a total disregard in considering it in both urban and architectural design processes. While the majority of interviewed participants realised this, only a few undertook certain design approaches to confront it.Therefore, this research argues that it is necessary to confront the ambiguity of architectural identity by simplifying its complexity. In order to achieve this, simpler topics such as the architectural character and architectural features are introduced then explored as ways to interpret architectural identity more objectively. It could be concluded that addressing the complexity of architectural identity will provide important answers for the future of any contemporary architecture including that of Khartoum. Is it possible to define identity?The early exploration of this research has commenced with the hypothesis that architectural identity could be precisely identified. Within this, general definitions of the term identity were explored. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, identity is "the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is". The Cambridge dictionary, however, defines it as: "who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group that make them different from others".Additionally, Fearon (1999, p.2) distilled the meaning of identity from the analysis of both the current usage in ordinary language and social science discourse. He argues that the term identity is presently used in two senses: social and personal. In the former sense, he defines identity as "a social category, a set of persons marked by a label and distinguished by rules deciding membership and (alleged) characteristic features or attributes". As for the second sense of personal identity; "an identity is some distinguishing characteristic (or characteristics) that a person takes a special pride in or views as socially consequential but more-or-less unchangeable". Lynch (1960, p.8) interprets the identity of an object as "its distinction from other things, its recognition as a separable entity. This is called identity, not in the sense of equality with something else, but with the meaning of individuality or oneness". Brislin (2012) emphasises that the definition of identity could be either tight or loose, nevertheless it endows a sense of survival: "What is identity, that ephemeral and quixotic thing? Draw it too tightly and it is a noose: a boundary marker ...

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