IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

The realm of heritage has been steadily expanding through recent decades, incorporating both landscape (Florence Declaration), intangible heritage (Québec Declaration) and everyday surroundings (Faro Convention). As of November 2022 the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces has adopted a new strategy for listed buildings and sites, which specifically designate infrastructure as new theme of priority for future listings. Thus, a new realm of our environment has entered the scope of heritage considerations. For tragic reasons, the events of 2022 have emphasized the political and strategic importance of infrastructures. Further, they form significant structures and monuments within contemporary landscape, and as Brian Larkin (2013) notes, infrastructures “comprise the architecture for circulation, literally providing the undergirding of modern societies, and they generate the ambient environment of everyday life.” The Elsinore Highway, inaugurated in 1956, is the first stretch of highway in Denmark and as such it constitutes a relevant case for future listing. Yet as part of the European highways E47 and E55 it breaks every boundary of place; and with added lanes, regular maintenance and safety compliance hardly any of the original material is left. Through the analysis of a case study, for instance the Elsinore Highway, the paper asks how current concepts of heritage, as defined by above mentioned declarations and conventions, can encompass, describe, and manage infrastructures? The paper rests on a conception of heritage as both a cultural construct, continuously negotiated as part of contemporary society (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996), and as situated material evidence (Olsen, 2010).