The client wants to develop a policy that will improve the handling of archival material (such as drafts and sketches) pertaining to garden and landscape architecture. The SAG was asked to make an inventory of where the archival material is found (locations and institutions), how it is selected and/or preserved, how it is stored and how accessible it is.
Although by current standards the organization and design of Dutch landscape has all but ignored the existing environment in the recent past, today’s interest in the cultural and historical value of the land even serves as the basis for certain interventions (identifiable in, among other things, the so-called Belvedere policy). In addition, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries has experienced a reversal in policy, which accompanies a shift from agrarian expansion to the use of farmland for other functions, such as nature reserves and rural housing projects. Seen in this light, the intensified interest in the history of garden and landscape architecture (a collective memory) is understandable. And archival research is one way of discovering the initial intentions behind the design of Dutch landscapes.
SAG’s inventory of archival methods and of the location of archives pertaining to 20th-century Dutch garden and landscape architecture – material found in the possession of private parties, ministries and other institutions in the Netherlands – has led to rather pathetic results. The present appetite for policy-based knowledge of the discipline and for visual materials cannot be appeased by archival documents from the past century that perhaps never existed or that, despite their great value, have been lost. Conclusions and recommendations have been set down in a report, along with the systematic inventory and a register, all of which serve as reference material for architects, archivists and researchers.