This paper questions the binary structure of the notion “shared heritage”/ “patrimoine partagé” that has emerged in recent debates on built heritage in former colonial territories. In the discourses of, for instance, ICOMOS, the notion stands for a heritage “shared” by former “colonizers” and former “colonized”, both categories being considered – albeit often implicitly – as homogenous entities. In line with Stuart Hall, I will argue for an approach to colonial built heritage that takes up the more complex nature of the question “whose heritage?” By focusing on the remarkable colonial built architecture of the city of Lubumbashi, situated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I will make a plea for re-thinking and re-positioning this legacy as a critical filter between colonial history and postcolonial memory, thus extending traditional standards of documenting built legacy through formal description and physical assessment that often isolate buildings from their urban as well as historical contexts (social, economic, cultural and/or political). Being influenced by the work of the Mémoires de Lubumbashi-group as well as recent scholarship in the field of architectural history informed by postcolonial studies, the approach on built heritage presented here is twofold. On the one hand, a plea is made to link the city’s urban form to colonial history by relating it to the cosmopolitan society that produced and experienced it. On the other hand, an approach is suggested that acknowledges how specific urban places and buildings in the city are currently being re-appropriated as “lieux de mémoire” by a variety of agents that do not necessarily (want to) share this heritage.

This paper is based on my earlier research on colonial architecture and urbanism in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which resulted in a PhD at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of the Ghent Uni-versity (Johan Lagae, “Kongo zoals het is”. Drie architectuurverhalen uit de Belgische kolonisatiegeschiedenis (1920-1960), 3 vols., unpublished, 2002). It is further informed by a series of visits to the city of Lubumbashi in the summer of 2000, September 2005, December 2006 and August 2007. I would like to thank all those who have been help-ful in facilitating those visits and with whom I have been able to exchange ideas, most notably prof. Jean-Luc Vellut, prof. Donatien Dibwe Dia Mwemba, prof. Michel Lwamba Bilonda, professor Donatien Muya, Hubert Maheux, Marine Issumo, Moïse Panga, Serge Songa Songa and the members of the artists’ collective Le Vicanos Club, among which Sammy Baloji and Patrick Mudekereza. The project has further more benefited greatly from the work done by Maarten Liefooghe and by students of the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of the Ghent University during a research seminar in 2006. I finally want to thank Bernard Toulier, Mercedes Volait and Tristan Gilloux for the fruitful exchanges of ideas on the topic of heritage in formerly colonized territories.