The article is used to consider affect in historical and contemporary architectural practice. This takes shape through a consideration of a 2012-2015 historic preservation project involving one of the famed rock-hewn churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia, which sits amongst a complex of churches designated a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1978. Using interviews to inject play into theory and vice versa, and diffractive drawing to be speculative and projective, we suggest how envisaging the affective unsettles "normal" architectural practice.