Toward a Dispersion of Architectural Archives?

Abstract

While architecture museums come in all shapes and sizes, the practice of establishing an archive of architectural artifacts and instituting public accessibility is central to all. If, in the past few decades, two main approaches to the architectural archive have been identified—namely, the ‘critical depth’ of carefully curated assemblages and the ‘encyclopedic breadth’ of comprehensive collections—more recently, new hybrid models have been developed and implemented. The emerging dominant model appears to be conceptual, if not formal: the dispersion of the architectural archive. However, with such growing dispersion, is the architectural archive itself at risk of evaporation?