How does co-creating the stories of public facilities help to reimagine architecture as a collective practice?

The International Journal of Public History has published the article: Towards a Public Architectural History: Collective-Use Facilities and Community Engagement in Portugal and Spain

Developed by researchers from DINÂMIA'CET-Iscte – Ricardo Costa Agarez, Ana Mehnert Pascoal and Ivonne Herrera-Pineda, the article examines how publicly funded collective-use facilities, built since the mid-twentieth century in Portugal and Spain, continue to shape local life and resilience in peripheral regions.

The article presents insights from the ERC-funded project ReARQ.IB - Built Environment Knowledge for Resilient, Sustainable Communities: Understanding Everyday Modern Architecture and Urban Design in the Iberian Peninsula (1939-1985), that integrates the ongoing research initiative Arquitectura Aqui, which engages local communities to recover and reinterpret the histories of their shared collective-use facilities.

The study presents an innovative methodology for exploring architectural history by combining archival research, an ethnographic approach, and public participation. This methodology considers architecture as a living record of shared knowledge and collective memory.

The publication is available at https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/iph-2025-0002/html