Research

Landscape architecture (LA) archives safeguard Europe’s designed landscapes, yet remain fragmented, unevenly digitised, and largely absent from European digital infrastructures. Building on the Network of European Landscape Architecture Archives (NELA, 2019) and the COST Action CA23128 “ConnectLAA” (2024–2028; ~150 members in 35 countries), this project addresses low digital maturity, heterogeneous metadata, and minimal engagement with the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH). It will bridge the LA archive community with ECCCH, mobilising under‑represented cultural heritage institutions (CHIs), expanding the ECCCH community, and strengthening capacity for interoperability and digital continuity. Leveraging NELA/ConnectLAA, it will channel existing momentum toward ECCCH tools, ensuring uptake builds on—rather than duplicates—prior work. Current ECCCH engagement shows minimal participation from landscape CHIs, revealing a sector‑wide readiness gap. The project targets archivists, curators, librarians, researchers, and landscape professionals across Europe, prioritising Central/Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, and the Baltics, with multilingual materials where feasible. By mapping institutions, training practitioners, producing actionable guidance, and coordinating with ECHOES, it will create concrete, scalable entry points for LA archives to join the Cultural Heritage Cloud.

The Fostering Water Circularity in Peri-Urban Landscapes (FAIR) project aims to establish an integrated framework for circular water management in peri-urban areas, enhancing a new paradigm for urban water cycles. The project addresses the pressing need for conventional water infrastructures and systems, which often relies on "take-use-dispose" models, and are inefficient under climate stress (such as water scarcity, water excess) for a circular transformative approach. This need is particularly urgent in peri-urban regions where urban, rural, and industrial elements converge, often under high developmental pressures. Therefore, FAIR focuses on three European peri-urban areas—Midden-Delfland, Weiz and Prato—representing varied climatic zones to develop adaptable, site-specific water circularity strategies. The project aims to (1) evaluating integrated water resource management approaches that optimize ecological, economic, and social sustainability; (2) analyzing peri-urban water flows and governance dynamics to inform scalable models; (3) co-designing water management practices following a landscape systemic design and the 5R principles (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, Restore) through stakeholder engagement workshops; and (4) creating a decision model to guide policy recommendations and transfer circular strategies across Europe. Outcomes of FAIR will include a comparative analysis and atlas of the studied regions, a circular water management catalogue, and a robust framework for policy recommendations, to be disseminated widely among regional authorities, NGOs, and landscape urban planners. This work lays the foundation for resilient, ecologically aligned water management practices and strengthens Europe’s capacity to address climate-induced water challenges through a circular economy approach.

The project contributes to the research field of landscape and infrastructure. The Koralm Railway is a section of the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor, a high-performance railway across Europe. The section of the Koralm Railway connects the cities of Graz and Klagenfurt as a linear infrastructure with a high-performance railway. The railway line is being built using state-of-the-art technology and is about to go into operation. The new infrastructure is transforming the landscape. In the research project, the characteristics of the landscape changed and redesigned by the railway will be surveyed and its impact on the landscape due to infrastructural interventions will be investigated. The results will be prepared for use as an audio guide on ÖBB trains.