Memory of the Designed LandscapeMemory of the Designed Landscape

Within the programme, the impetus is given to a jointly supported and future-proof perspective on the unique history of the designed landscape. This focuses not only on preserving, sharing and interpreting the important archives, but also on using them in future design assignments and preserving the cultural-historical values of gardens and landscapes.

A programmatic approach makes it possible to work step by step towards a long-term perspective for garden and landscape archives. It focuses primarily on exploring the possible contours of a method for valuing and selecting garden and landscape architecture archives, and the associated network. In order to explore the possible forms of such a network and archive, the programme is organised around concrete case studies.

The programmatic process provides several concrete case studies of different archives and archival approaches, ranging from an existing archive that urgently needs to find a home to an archive that has yet to be formed by bringing together several sub-archives. The cases each have their own scale and approach, a specific network and type of archive material. They each deal with specific aspects of the content-related, methodological and strategic aspects of the archive issue.

The case studies represent the diversity of archives that characterize the landscape: an active firm with a living archive, a dissolved firm with a fragmented and disappearing archive, a municipal archive, and an archive of a spatial project encompassing multiple provinces. In each case, we worked with a team of independent researchers to investigate potential solutions for acquisition, collection, and accessibility. This team consisted of Marlies Brinkhuijsen, Imke van Hellemondt, Andrea Prins, and Lara Voerman.

The choice for a decentralised network form builds on the organically grown infrastructure of archives. A network, as a sum of actors from different sectors and groups in society, does not yet exist. This is why the programme will initially focus on consolidating the connections that arose at the time of the initial inventory, in which a clear commitment and consensus has been established. But the network should equally represent the voices of other actors involved in the creation of gardens and landscapes.

Nieuwe Instituut recognises multivocality as a guiding principle. In the context of garden and landscape architecture, this means that, in addition to the professional design sector, social actors - from citizens' initiatives to businesses and urban ecologists - will also become involved in thinking about the archives.

On 15 November 2024, Youssef Louakili of the Ministry of OC&W received the advisory report Memory of the Designed Landscape. On this occasion, he indicated that OC&W wants to facilitate a follow-up study, in which the recommendations from the report would serve as guidelines.