Research on contentious heritage is about the negotiations that drive the valuation of heritage over time. It focuses on heritage as a social process and concentrates on how various stakeholders use heritage in distinct ways to construct multifarious values. The YCON project took the government decision to demolish the Y-block as well as the dispute and social protest following that decision as its primary case study. The Y-block was a modernist building constructed in 1969 with two curved arms creating a Y-shape as part of architect Erling Viksjø’s concept for the Norwegian government quarter including eight buildings in central Oslo. The building was finally demolished in late 2020, almost ten years after the terrorist attack on the site by the right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, which resulted in the decision by the government in 2014 to tear down the Y-block. Through the Y-block case, a set of categories/concepts will be established that can be used to face similar or related disputes in the future. The categories and concepts developed in the research process will be used to design a preliminary database of contentious heritage that can be developed further by adding more case studies.

This project was a collaboration with the distinguished Sveinung Berg, Researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. The original project was supported through the By-SIS project at NIKU and in 2020 was nominated to receive three years of SIP funding provided by the Research Council of Norway.