When we enter a museum, walk through a historic center, or check a country's list of heritage sites, we rarely think about the process behind these choices. Who decided, on behalf of us all, that these objects, places, architecture, and heritage deserved to be conserved and shared, while others are discarded?
Generally, experts are the ones who hold the decision-making power—be they historians, museologists, architects, or geographers. But on what basis are these decisions made? Can the complexity of history fit into a checklist? Or, even more fundamentally, on which version of history are these decisions being based?
In a global context marked by socioeconomic inequality, structural historical injustices, and imminent ecological collapse, an era of reconstructing cities, architecture, communities, and heritage is emerging, in which raising these questions is fundamental.
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Heritage Beyond the Object: Memory, Identity, and Practice
To open the debate on heritage, we must consider that there are several definitions of the term, and that many are tied to the idea that the management and conservation of tangible and natural heritage should fall solely to experts and professionals. However, contemporary studies and practices have shown that heritage is not limited to the material or physical; rather, it constitutes a relationship between identity, place, and memory, and is therefore directly related to the community that experiences or has experienced it.
Researcher Laurajane Smith argues that heritage is a process, a performance that embodies specific ways of knowing and understanding the world. Through it, we identify values that give meaning to the present and guide what we deem important for the future. In this context, she advocates the idea that heritage is far more than a collection of physical objects, whether artifacts or buildings; what matters is the way they are appropriated, without separating the tangible from the intangible.
This concept of heritage relates directly to what Ailton Krenak, one of today's leading Indigenous voices, has advocated. In a lecture, he expressed his skepticism toward the widely circulated concepts of heritage and preservation. As he recounts, during his youth, he was constantly encouraged to preserve the forest and rivers—elements tied to his daily life and the formation of his identity and culture.
By contrast, the most widespread idea of heritage and preservation—despite recent progress—still largely fails to connect places or objects with active practice. Moreover, it often functions as an instrument of privilege, separating those who can access and enjoy certain spaces from the marginalized who cannot. For Indigenous peoples, for a long time, heritage was whatever the colonial power established—a history that, indeed, did not belong to them.
The Authorized Heritage Discourse and Its Origins
Through this perspective, it becomes clear that heritage practice is not random, but structured and guided by social norms—what Smith calls the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD). Of Eurocentric and Western origin, this discourse is heavily linked to the rise of European nationalism, which sought to secure national identities. Within this framework, heritage becomes a monument—something aesthetically pleasing that must be preserved to guarantee a shared identity for the future under the custody of experts.
In practical terms, in Brazil, for instance, the institutionalization of this practice occurred precisely alongside the rise of the dictatorship, with the creation of preservation agencies grounded in the modernist intellectual movement and its project of building a national identity linked to the elites.
This largely unquestioned application of preservation and listing methods in Brazil produced a list of protected assets with very little diversity, dominated by buildings and architectural ensembles—primarily religious structures—concentrated in a handful of states. This pattern, sustained over time, meant that official heritage mostly reflected elite values, while cultural references from popular traditions and historically marginalized groups, such as quilombos and terreiros, appeared only residually.
This outcome reveals that decisions about what is preserved as heritage are never neutral; rather, they construct a selective representation of the country's history and identity.
The Histories That Heritage Listing Fails to Protect
In the effort to prioritize consensus-driven readings of national memory, alternative narratives are diminished or even erased. This practice is not unique to Brazil or Latin America, though it often feels more acute in these contexts.
Smith cites the example of England, where recognized heritage is dominated by castles, aristocratic estates, Roman archaeology, and industrial sites that narrate the history of the so-called "great men" who owned them. And what is left out? Working-class histories, stories of immigration, colonial expansion, and slavery, among others.
This same exercise can be applied anywhere else, such as Brazil, or Latin America more broadly. Here, greater value is generally placed on colonial and imperial architectural ensembles, historic centers associated with the elites, religious complexes—mostly of Catholic tradition—monuments linked to the founding of cities and the arrival of Europeans, as well as large-scale pre-Columbian archaeological sites with strong monumental and tourist appeal.
Conversely, memories and sites associated with colonial violence, such as massacre and expulsion sites, often remain marginalized. This includes living Indigenous heritage—territories, practices, and knowledge systems—that goes beyond spectacularized archaeological remains. Spaces connected to Black and Afro-descendant populations are also less recognized, especially regarding the history of slavery and the post-abolition period, along with places of memory for working classes and urban peripheries, and the histories of non-hegemonic immigrant groups. Similarly, narratives of women, children, and LGBTQIA+ communities tend to be underrepresented.
This "absence" goes far beyond a lack of physical preservation mechanisms; it directly impacts a people's self-esteem and sense of belonging. National heritage is a powerful source of meaning, and those who do not see themselves reflected in this mirror feel as though they do not truly belong, as Krenak stated in the earlier quote.
Experiences of Reparation and the Reclamation of Memory
The Memórias da Terra (Memories of the Earth) project, led by Paulo Tavares—which laid the groundwork for Brazil's award-winning pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale—exemplifies a shift in focus. It does so by mapping former Xavante village sites that were forcibly abandoned in the 20th century and proposing their recognition as territorial and landscape heritage, treating the landscape as "living archaeology" and heritage as a tool for memory, restitution, and historical reparation.
In this same arena of reclamation, a notable case is that of the Munduruku people, who occupied the construction site of the Teles Pires Dam in rural Brazil. They demanded the return of funerary urns and other sacred artifacts removed from their territory during the dam's construction and subsequently placed under the custody of state agencies. Their actions exposed the expropriation of Indigenous cultural assets in the name of development and asserted the community's right to control their spiritual and archaeological heritage.
In Colombia, public acts of protest and the toppling of colonial and conquistador statues, though more spontaneous, also serve as examples of social mobilization around memory and identity, demanding heritage references that genuinely represent the population.
Paths to Decolonizing Heritage
To overcome the logic of a single authority and build a more critical and inclusive heritage perspective, it is essential to value diverse voices, encourage dialogue, and expand social participation. In the field of heritage policy, decolonizing means revising preservation criteria inherited from European models and their exclusionary narratives—what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie identifies as the danger of a "single story."
So-called architectures of reparation, as Tavares points out, challenge the canon and bring to light historically erased or silenced narratives. Within architecture, the idea of reparation presupposes a historical and conceptual effort to revisit, reorder, and reconstitute archival collections and narratives, opening the door to alternative readings of the past and our relationship with territory. This process also involves questioning the symbolic criteria and epistemological foundations that organize archives, museums, and collections, in tandem with current debates and initiatives surrounding heritage restitution.
As Smith notes, it is possible that what we produce now may eventually become a new dominant discourse; ideally, however, it will be one that is more inclusive, more democratic, and permanently open to critique.
This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: Rethinking Heritage: How the architecture of today shapes the memory of tomorrow. Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.
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Rethinking History: Democratising Architectural HeritageThis article was written by Camilla Ghisleni. The translation is powered by AI.
