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This article explores the concept of “heritage futures”, the role of heritage in managing relations between present and future societies. It assesses how thinking strategically about the future changes, complicates and contextualises practices of heritage. What might an attention to the future bring to work in heritage, and simultaneously, what challenges—both practical and ethical—arise?

This article takes the form of a conversation about the nature of heritage futures and how such a project may be implemented in both heritage practice and field research in heritage studies. The two authors are heritage scholars who integrate heritage futures questions into their research in different ways, and their conversation uncovers potentialities and difficulties in the heritage futures project.

The discussion covers the particular ethical issues that arise when the dimension of time is added to heritage research and practice, including questions of continuism, presentism and specificity. The conversation argues for the importance of considering the future in heritage studies and heritage practice and that this forms a key part of understanding how heritage may be part of building a sustainable present and future.

The future is an under-examined concept within heritage studies, even as heritage is often framed as something to be preserved “for future generations”. But what impact might it have on heritage practice to really consider what this means, beyond the platitude? This article suggests that heritage scholars and practitioners direct their attention to this often-neglected facet of heritage.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of building material reuse and heritage value, and raises questions about how “preservation” has traditionally been defined and conceptualized. With a grounding in the realities of global climate change, the paper argues for further research on the topic and for the active engagement of the preservation field in reuse efforts.

After a review of existing literature, this study takes a descriptive and conceptual approach to explore the heritage values generated through material reuse.

This paper finds that processes of material reuse are richly embedded with heritage value and offer a conceptual challenge to established modes of heritage practice.

The findings of this paper suggest that heritage practitioners should actively engage with material reuse efforts to better understand the heritage values generated from such processes. Areas of future research and collaboration are identified.

Despite their intrinsic interaction with aged and existing infrastructure, there has been limited engagement in the heritage and preservation field with the topics of deconstruction, building material reuse, or construction and demolition waste practices more generally. This paper thus provides descriptive research on a topic that has been unevenly explored.

Building on the thematic intersection of architectural waste and conservation, the purpose of this paper is to look at the demolition and deconstruction of Honest Ed’s and Mirvish Village – an iconic site in downtown Toronto. In doing so, it examines contradictory site values and tensions inherent in sustainable heritage practices.

This article uses a “follow-the-thing” methodology – an approach developed by the cultural geographer Nicky Gregson (Gregson et al., 2009) – to demonstrate how engaging with processes of building demolition and deconstruction can begin to reveal the site’s multiple legacies.

Recognizing that materials are not lost, but instead move through and are determined by various physical, spatial and cultural conditions, this piece demonstrates how an attention to the choreography of demolition and deconstruction may deepen our understanding of notions of ownership, responsibility and stewardship.

Exposing material trajectories and various actors in the chain, this work challenges the save/discard binary which underpins conventional heritage practices and provides insight into new ways of considering the significance of demolition/deconstruction sites as well as broader social and environmental landscapes implicated in its reconfiguration.

Whereas heritage value is often defined in contrast with perceptions of loss, this piece suggests that engagement with processes of demolition and deconstruction constitutes a form of conservation that simultaneously acknowledges the difficult heritage of these procedures, while also commemorating the site’s ongoing transformation.