How do i matter as a heritage building? Exploring heritage building agency in the technology era through a more-than-human lens

Abstract

Heritage buildings are increasingly adapted to contemporary needs through technological interventions, yet these approaches remain human-centred, leaving limited recognition of the buildings’ own capacity to shape architectural change. Drawing on critical heritage and more-than-human perspectives, we investigate how heritage buildings can be approached as agentic actors in negotiations of spatial and technological adaptation. Through thing-interviews with ten architects, speaking from the perspective of the heritage buildings they designed, we examine how buildings express self-value, engage with social infrastructures, and “sense” reshaping through material and functional transformations. We extended these insights through a design fiction session with four experts, exploring future scenarios for human-nonhuman connection, fragmented reconfiguration over time. From this, we propose three implications for designing more-than-human futures in intelligent built environments with heritage values: (1) negotiating consent and power asymmetries, (2) framing stewardship through care and companionship, and (3) rethinking authenticity beyond originality.