2026 WG3 Regional Workshop Copenhagen: Archives as Learning Settings

In 2026, WG3 members organized four Regional Workshops. The overarching aim of these Regional Workshops is to initiate dialogue between teachers and students to identify their wishes and needs, and if possible, to start co-creating new methods and tools for using landscape architecture archives and archival materials in education. This co-creation process will continue into 2027. 

 “As teaching is becoming increasingly digitized, educators and students alike are fascinated by the analogue and tangible world of historical archives. Indeed, historical collections are valuable spaces for discovery, learning, inspiration, reflection, and wonder. Archival objects such as drawings, letters, photographs, and diaries can tie us closer to past experiences and help us practice long-term thinking, which is needed as we attempt to create more sustainable futures for landscapes and cities.  

Yet, far from being neutral mirrors of the past, archives are social constructs and, as such, have many gaps, too; every archive has its missing links, hidden or forgotten material, and even more absences in the sense of things that were never considered valuable and worth collecting in the first place. These archival absences reflect what feminist writer Rebecca Solnit calls ‘strategic silences’ that can restrain certain stories from being told and places from being ‘seen’ and valued. How can we address archives as valuable places for landscape architecture education while also contributing to the critical reflection about their limitations? How can landscape architecture students and educators contribute to how archivists all over Europe are currently expanding and rethinking their collections?” (quoted from the workshop flyer, prepared by Svava Riesto) 

The Regionals Workshop Copenhagen brought educators from different landscape architecture programs in Northern and Western Europe, students at the University of Copenhagen, and an archivist of a specialized collection of landscape architecture drawings at the University of Copenhagen Library, to discuss, test, and reflect on ways in which archives and education can mutually enhance each other in order to stimulate historically informed practices in landscape architecture for the future.