Espace patrimoine bâti is a place for dialogue where connections are forged between communities and heritage, with the aim of deepening knowledge of heritage, understanding its complexity, and promoting it in a sustainable manner.

With a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, a Minor in Urban Planning, and a Master’s degree in Built Heritage Conservation from Université de Montréal, Yolene Handabaka is passionate about built and urban heritage. Her perspective on heritage stems from her background in architecture, which gives her a unique, focused vision for every building she works on. She is convinced that heritage is a place that bears witness to our history, our origins, and our appropriation of space—a space that is constantly renewed through the people who choose it and interact within it over time. A space becomes heritage when the connection between people and past realities is born there and endures over the years. Built heritage is thus a dynamic reality, as it evolves and enriches itself over time as a living presence waiting to be valued.

Currently, Yolene Handabaka is a Ph.D. candidate in architecture at Université de Montréal, where she is pursuing her doctoral research on the bottom-up creation of the social value of built heritage. Concurrently, she works as a consultant in built heritage as well as for the Laboratory for the Study of Potential Architecture (LEAP) and the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competition, and Quality (CRC-ACQUA) at Université de Montréal.