This article aims to present how, while using different architectural languages, two architectural fictions stage the same identity. The two cases studied are from Rio Grande do Sul, South Brazil, the area of Venetian immigration at the end of the XIX century. Today, the third generation of the descendants of Venetian immigrants is living what Anthony D. Smith calls the "ethnic revival". They are reinventing their Northern Italian identity not only by using an identity check list, (search for great heroes and famous ancestors, a language, a folklore, etc.) but also by playing this identity by architectural means in order to build up a cultural heritage. Through the examination/observation of some architectures, I will show how the usage and the invention of signs are able to build this "identity fiction".
fiction; identity; immigration; Italian-Brazilians; patrimony