Memory under existential judgement of a heritage: Laranjeiras Campus of Federal University of Sergipe

Abstract

More than discussing positive and negative aspects of interventions in the urban landscape, this paper seeks to provoke agents who work to preserve material cultural heritage. Why does the implemented Campus in the city of Laranjeiras by the Federal University of Sergipe, in 2007, not assert itself as an existential locus? This critical reflection presents the project and work carried out by the Monumenta Program to install the Campus and its virtues and deficiencies in relation to the theory of conservation and restoration. The existential crises along 16 years of existence include sensitive conflicts between university and local community, a reduction in the number of implemented courses to just three of them, and so on. A hypothesis is proposed that an intervention project that seeks the “restoration” of a historic building cannot avoid understanding and assimilating local memory, this paper looks for to reveal the causes, conceptions and practices that contribute to answering the mentioned question, thinkin about the disconnection of the process of “conservation and restoration” interventions from the memory of a society, which maybe culminate in the existential refusal of the implanted object and, consequently, of the heritage it represents.