Though the fragment is the inevitable and primary state in the mortality of all objects, it fails to be positioned as a positive element or conscious response in contemporary architectural expression. This absence is based on misconceptions of finality. Often perceived as temporary and vanishing, it essentially encompasses the majority of the lifespan of objects, since nature and artifice quickly erode the ephemeral whole. The proposed study will seek to position the fragment as a determined beginning rather than an unexpected end in the discourse and production of architecture. Through a study of the religious reliquary, a largely forgotten and perverse construct used to control and amplify the intensity of the fragment, I will seek to reveal how the fragment can be created, as opposed to merely encountered. How it can be considered a site for opportunity and activism as opposed to ruin or paralyzing melancholia. The work will materialize with the production of constructs and drawings based on analysis of the fragment's formal, organizational, and allegorical narratives, proceed with the making of a visual catalogue of strategies, and finally tested with opportunistic interventions on a sampling of incomplete public works scattered around Italy.