#Byggnadsvård: Mobilising Alternative Narratives of Building Care

Abstract

Old buildings are imbued with problems and possibilities shaped by their material condition. This article unfolds around material stories circulating on Instagram with the hashtag #byggnadsvård, using the Swedish concept byggnadsvård (‘building care’) as a lens to investigate material-discursive entanglements of heritage, sustainability and material care. Drawing on ethnographic and diffractive approaches, the article explores how conservation principles and sustainability are articulated in vernacular accounts of building care and how materials participate in the renegotiation of old buildings and maintenance and repair practices. The analysis shows how conservation ethics and environmental concerns are worked out through ordinary repair decisions and material encounters in a highly mediated social media setting. In this context, building care emerges as a regime of care that rethinks material relations and buildings as sustainable.