Connecting archival studies:
Workshop organized by NELA at the ECLAS conference 2024 in Brussels, Belgium, © Ulrike Krippner
Since 2021, NELA has contributed to the program of the annual ECLAS conference by hosting workshops about landscape architecture archives and archival work.
The workshops invite everybody to contribute and share ideas and experiences: those working with archives as well as newcomers to the field, teachers, scholars, practitioners, and students. The aim is to foster the network and raise awareness of landscape architecture archives as they are important resources for teaching, research, and professional practice in the field of landscape design and landscape planning. The core team organizing the workshops are Sophie von Schwerin and Hanna Sorsa-Sautet.
2024 Brussels, Belgium
Speed Design with Landscape Architecture Archives
Participants were invited to experience and explore the creative use of archival materials, and to test the potentials and challenges that archival records can bring to a new design. They worked in small groups, using “traditional” tools such as tracing paper, coloured pencils, scale rulers, etc. to produce a speed design that enhances a given historical public park in Brussels.
2023 Brno, Czech Republic
Points of Interest: Connecting the Landscape Architecture Archives in Europe
Archives and collections of landscape architecture are spread all over Europe, and they are often not visible. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a map of Europe that shows all the archives and collections as points of interests? What would this map look like? How could the archives be connected so that users could easily travel from one to the next and have open access to the records? Participants in the workshop discussed the desired options for a common platform and the challenges involved.
2022 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Collection Strategies
The NELA workshop explored the complex issue of acquisition policy. How to choose which documents or collections are to be memorialized for the profession and kept for future generations? The subject was approached from two points of view, covering the perspective of people who work in the archives and of those who use the archives in teaching or in research.
2021 Online conference hosted by SLU / Uppsala, Sweden
Update the Past: Archives of Landscape Architecture in the Digital Era
Workshop participants were encouraged to discuss recent challenges in dealing with archives, including public accessibility, digitization, born-digital data, and quality standards for collecting and distributing data.