The Madrid Roadmap: Co-Designing Foundations for Landscape Architecture Archives

Over one and a half intensive days in Madrid, four members of WG1 met to co-design the foundations of the Madrid Roadmap, a practical guide for institutions at the earliest stages of archive development. The meeting centred on the creation of the new URJC Landscape Architecture Archive and supported the development of the Iberian Landscape Architecture Memory (ILAM) initiative, which seeks to connect Spanish and Portuguese efforts into a shared digital platform.

Programme

To structure the work, the programme was organised around four core domains that guided every meeting, visit, and workshop. This framework ensured both methodological coherence and practical relevance as it was tested against URJC’s real conditions:

• What do we have? (collections, acquisition and scope)
• How do we describe it? (standards, metadata and cataloguing)
• How do we preserve and share it? (infrastructure, systems and longevity)
• How do we partner and sustain it? (strategy, funding and networking)

A Breakthrough with the URJC Library

A decisive moment came during the meeting with URJC Library Director María Teresa García Ruiz and her team. A semi-structured interview, guided by the 4-Domain Model, confirmed both technical feasibility and a strong institutional commitment.

Crucially, the library offered an immediately available deposit space at the Fuenlabrada campus, securing a tangible home base for the future landscape architecture archive. Their systems (Dublin Core) are compatible with anticipated standards, and the team expressed readiness to adopt ISAD(G) and collaborate with ConnectLAA on controlled vocabularies and methodological development.

Visits, Workshop, and Professional Exchange

The second day focused on methodological exchange and hands-on co-design, hosted by the ETSAM School of Architecture and the Spanish Association of Landscape Architects (AEP).

ETSAM Archive Visit

Marga Suárez, head of the Architecture Archive, presented ETSAM’s archival methodology, grounded in principles of provenance and original order. Their use of AtoM software and ICA standards offered a valuable reference model for future interoperability. A visit to the Fondo Silva Archive, the only landscape architect’s collection held, highlighted the diversity of document types involved.

Workshop

A workshop with ETSAM researchers followed, generating a first set of priorities for the Madrid Roadmap. Key outcomes included the need for acquisition strategies and defined budgets (Collections), and for deeper levels of description and complete finding aids (Metadata & Cataloguing). The workshop panels form the core working material to be refined in the upcoming WG1 meeting.

Case Study Presentation

Professor Carmen Marín presented the Madrid Parks and Gardens Historical Archive Project, which consolidates previously fragmented municipal collections now hosted at Retiro Park. Her work demonstrates how small teams can successfully structure and archive from dispersed historical materials.

Dialogue with the Spanish Association of Landscape Architects AEP

The concluding roundtable with the AEP resulted in concrete commitments, including offering their historical collection as a pilot and initiating broader national support.

Conclusion: A Shift from Planning to Action

The Madrid meeting marked a transition from planning to coordinated implementation. Engagement with key stakeholders confirmed that in Spain, we are not starting from zero: the space, systems, collections, and institutional allies are already in place to launch the first Landscape Architecture Archive at URJC.
The Madrid Roadmap will be further developed collaboratively by WG1 members.