Svava Riesto
Professor
svri@ign.ku.dk
+45 3533 1768
Research Group Landscape Architecture and Urban History
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Co-Curating Topographical Imaginaries
Radical landscape changes are unfolding, and this affects fundamental ideas about landscapes and human’s role in them. This research project will query into how museums engage in landscape change and sustainable topographical imaginaries.
Read more on the project webpage
Contact: Emmy Laura Perez Fjalland
The project is a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen and the Art Museum of Fuglsang. The project is funded by New Carlsberg Foundation.
Stories from Sofiegården: Alternative Forms of Living in Copenhagen as Cultural Heritage
This research project aims to nuance the understanding of spatial practices in Denmark’s post-war welfare state by studying Sofiegården, Copenhagen. This cluster of buildings was squatted 1965-69 and has made an imprint on the later constructions on this site. We activate the history of Sofiegården and relate it to contemporary discussions about housing justice, gender and class, and we explore the possibility of learning from the alternative forms of living on this site.
Read more at the project webpage
Contact: Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner
The project is a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen and the Museum of Copenhagen. The project is supported by the Augustinus Foundation.
Politics of maintenance, cultures of care: Ecofeminist movements in histories of architecture
This project explores four historic milieus in the Nordic countries between 1850 and 1940, at the intersection of feminism and environmentalism. The central inquiry is to comprehend how instances of ecofeminist spatial practices, in conjunction with care ethics, may have contributed to diversity in architectural approaches. The study places particular emphasis on maintenance and repair practices.
PhD Fellow Anne Pind. Supervisors: Niels Grønbæk Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Academy and Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner, both Professors at the University of Copenhagen
Learning from Collaboration: Building Future Practice
This project investigates the forms of collaboration across design fields, gender, class and geography that enabled Denmark’s 1960–1975 building boom. The project will also contribute new knowledge to current discussions about cross-disciplinary collaboration and diversity in the building sector.
Read more at the project webpage.
Contact: Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner
The project is a collaboration between University of Copenhagen, Technical University of Denmark, Aalborg University, Aarhus School of Architecture, and Royal Danish Acadamy. Funded by Realdania.
Metaphorical Houses
Five homes for five women by seven women architects in conversation with: Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Madelon Vrijsendorp, Orlando/Virginia Wolf and Josephine Baker. The ongoing project is supported by the Dreyer Foundation and Statens Kunstfond.
The work contributes the 2024 publication ‘The Dream – Play – Challenge Project. Facing Up to the Crisis in Residential Living’
The collective ‘Metaphorical Houses’: Ida Flarup Mathilde Lesénécal, Maria Mengen, Anne Pind, Anne Romme and Tine Bernstorff Aagaard
Elderly Rural Migrants and Informal Performance Spaces in Urban China
This research examines how elderly rural migrants in Jinan, China, transform plazas, markets, and infrastructural edges into informal performance spaces through Yu Opera. These gatherings emerge from everyday experiences of migration and adaptation shaped by the hukou (household registration) system and rapid urban redevelopment. The project explores how informal performances foster networks of care, cultural continuity, and belonging, and how they reshape public space from the bottom up.
PhD Fellow Xiaohui Zhang. Supervisors: Henriette Steiner, Professor at University of Copenhagen and Natalie Körner, Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Academy
Urban solutions to green transitions – at UCPH
The Urban Solutions to the Green Transition Living Lab in Nordhavn invites researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and local stakeholders to engage and help develop platforms for exchange, collaboration, and solutions to pressing challenges. Read more about our research agenda and upcoming pilot projects. The Living lab is supported by the
University of Copenhagen Green Solutions Centre.
Bring to light: Stories that matter for landscape futures
Communication and public scholarship project that brings untold stories from the spatial practices to light. You can follow the project on Instagram on @Bring___to___Light (3x underscore) and on Wikipedia, where we add stories about Danish architects across genders and forms of practice to the digital archive.
Read more at the project webpage
Contact: Svava Riesto and Liv Løvetand Rahbek
The project is kindly supported by the Dreyer’s Foundation.
Women in Danish Architecture: A new History of Gender and Pracice
By studying women who worked in landscape architecture, architecture and urban design in Denmark from the 1930s to 1980s, this project aims to contribute to a more complete understanding of Danish architecture history, and to do so in new, more engaging, and more inclusive ways. The aim is to write a history where architecture was not created by great individuals but through mutual and creative collaborations.
Read more at the webpage for Women in Danish Architecture
Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner (PIs), Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen, Mathilde Merolli, Frida Irving Søltoft, Liv Løvetand Rahbek, Mathilde Lundt Larsen
Planning with youth project (2020-2024)
In collaboration with Södertörn University, KTH, and Wageningen University, this project aims to assess challenges with youth involvement in planning by testing new methods and developing an intergenerational framework for planning of blue-green infrastructure in public places. Financed by the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development FORMAS.
Read more about the Planning with youth project
We are responsible and co-responsible for these annual courses at the University of Copenhagen:
- Master-level course Strategic Planning for Urban Nature
Contact: Natalie Gulsrud - Master-level course Theories and Methods in Landscape Architecture
Contact: Svava Riesto - Bachelor-level course Landskabsarkitekturens Historie, nutid og fremtid
Contact: Henriette Steiner and Svava Riesto - PhD course: Fundamentals of the PhD education at SCIENCE. Course Portfolio – University of Copenhagen).
Contact: Henriette Steiner and Svava Riesto
Further, we teach in various other courses and educational institutions in Denmark and in other countries, on bachelor, master, and PhD-level.
We also supervise Master and Bachelor-theses within our areas of expertise.
The research group Landscape Architecture and Urban Histories provides historical perspectives and methods to advance more inclusive and just ways of constructing and living with buildings, cities, infrastructures, and landscapes in the future. We offer knowledge and frameworks that enable societies to learn from the past and to address heritage in ways that promote resilience and equity. To this end, we use narrative approaches that make the invisible visible, drawing out the relationships between urban-rural, centre-margin, and humanity-technology. We actively engage in public scholarship and the archival exploration of histories.
In addition, through expanding and reimagining landscape studies, we move beyond anthropocentrism and embrace not just the human in a landscape but as many agents as we can identify: humans, plants, soil, buildings, municipalities, organizations, archives, laws, and so on. Employing an approach where nature and culture are not treated as dichotomies, we unravel the complexity of historical spaces.
As an international group, we strive to be an inclusive forum for mutual development. We place emphasis on a collaborative and transdisciplinary research approach, and therefore, we are always open for proposals from people interested in working with us.
Members of the Research Group
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search in Name | Search in Title | Search in Phone | |
| Alexander David Clark | Research Assistant | ||
| Anne Holten Pind | Visiting PhD Student | ||
| Emmy Laura Perez Fjalland | Postdoc | ||
| Henriette Steiner | Professor | +4535331033 | |
| Liv Løvetand Rahbek | Graphic Designer. | +4535333328 | |
| Margaret Birney Vickery | Guest Researcher | ||
| Marie Northroup Christensen | External Consultant | ||
| Natalie Marie Gulsrud | Associate Professor - Promotion Programme | +4521865524 | |
| Svava Riesto | Professor | +4535331768 | |
| Xiaohui Zhang | Enrolled PhD Student |
Research group leader
Searching for forgotten architects
Film presenting the research methods used in the project Women in Danish Architecture.
Why green space matters for urban sustainability
Hear Natalie Gulsrud nuance the debate on green gentrification. We need just and caring approaches to the green transition and we should not leave anyone behind, including urban nature.