Indigenous Architecture in Brazil as Heritage

The constructed space plays a crucial role in the memory and sustenance of Indigenous communities in Brazil. Despite this significance, the preservation efforts of Indigenous architecture by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional - IPHAN) have yet to fully incorporate this element. This seminar investigates how the Institute approached Indigenous heritage since 1937, navigating intellectual confrontations across diverse Brazilian cultural institutions and addressing the limited discourse surrounding Indigenous architecture. The seminar will delve into specific cases based on archival research drawn from multiple Brazilian states.

Speaker: Luana Espig Regiani - PhD Student, UNICAM; Pre-doctoral Fellow, Harvard.

Moderated by Bruno Carvalho, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies; Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative; Interim Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center (2023-2024).

Luana Regiani is a PhD student in History at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and Pre-doctoral Fellow at Harvard, supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). Currently conducting research on the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) and Indigenous heritage in Brazil. Holds a Master's degree in Architecture, Technology, and the City from UNICAMP, and a Bachelor's degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the same institution with an exchange year at the Italian university Politecnico di Milano.

Bruno Carvalho works on cities as lived and imagined spaces. Often, he investigates how socio-cultural processes of the past converge in and with the present. Carvalho is writing a book tentatively called The Invention of the Future: A Transatlantic History of Urbanization (under contract with Princeton University Press). It focuses on the experiences and aspirations of city dwellers and planners, recasting modern urbanization within a history of competing visions for the future, from the 1750s onward. The book proposes that urban histories can renew our capacity to envision and pursue large-scale transformations. A Rio de Janeiro native, Carvalho received his Ph.D. at Harvard University (2009) and was a faculty member at Princeton University (2009-2018).

Co-sponsored by Native Cultures of the Americas and the Harvard University Native American Program.