Nicola Braghieri, “Vernacular Heritage: A people without memory is a people without a future” in AG Denkmalschutzjahr 2025 – ICOMOS Suisse – Denkmalpflege der ETH Zürich (eds.) A Future for Whose Past (Hier und Jetzt, Zürich 2025) 445–456
Featured in a collective volume on the question of “minor heritage”, the chapter offers a concise synthesis of positions articulated across two decades of work, research, and teaching, and further elaborated in other publications. While centred on vernacular heritage, its scope extends to the broader question of the “critical recolonisation” of abandoned rural territories and the valorisation of “local projects”. It interrogates the paradoxical notion of “vernacular heritage”, questioning how constructions produced without authorship and rooted in material culture can be inscribed within heritage regimes traditionally tied to monuments. It traces the meanings of “vernacular” through linguistics, anthropology, and architectural discourse, emphasising its relation to subsistence economies, tacit knowledge, and collective imagination. Particular attention is given to the innovative role of digital survey, whose extensive applicability to the mapping ofterritories and buildings provides new opportunities for heritage analysis and valorisation. A critical distinction is drawn between architecture as authored form and vernacular building as spontaneous necessity, raising issues of value, symbolism, and conservation. The discussion highlights the limits of monumentalisation and the risks of nostalgic or aestheticising attitudes, advocating instead for repair, maintenance, and active design as forms of living preservation. Ultimately, vernacular heritage is understood less as an object of conservation than as a cultural process, offering ethical and practical lessons for contemporary architectural practice.