When culture is turned against heritage: Monumental architecture, urban landscapes and an imagined multi-arts cultural centre in Buenos Aires

Culture and the arts are today at the centre of policy agendas for urban revitalisation and city branding across the globe. Paradoxically, cultural venues and heritage in the city suffer neglect, damage and lack of public funding. This paper seeks to address this contradiction by examining a cultural regeneration project that concerns the transformation of an iconic listed building into a spectacular cultural centre, focusing on the role of culture and the arts in contemporary disputes over public space. The building at stake is the magnificent Post and Telecommunications Palace in Buenos Aires, currently under refurbishment, whose dome has been recently converted into a symbol of architectural prestige inspired by global cultural trends. This operation, which infringed the regulations of heritage protection for listed buildings, was rendered visible in the context of the national bicentenary commemorations in Argentina and was made productive in the process of democratic political revitalisation initiated by the federal government. Based on empirical research (in-depth interviews with stakeholders, visual materials and official documents) and drawing on insights from cultural geography and sociology, the paper analyses the underpinning rationale for the creation of a cultural quarter in downtown Buenos Aires, one which is based on the international hegemonic discourse of the creative industries. If culture and the arts are central to the revitalisation of urban spaces the question of whose culture and whose heritage are being promoted arises. The paper sheds light on the process by which a sense of place (Massey, 1994) is negotiated through the uses of culture and the arts in the shaping of place-making strategies in contemporary cities.