Svava Riesto

Svava Riesto

Lektor

Medlem af:

Svava Riesto is an associate professor in the history of landscape architecture and leader of the research group Landscape Architecture and Urban History. 

Her research investigates questions of justice, ecology and social change in relation to built environments. She focusses on the buildings, cities and landscapes of the 20th century welfare states - their histories, legacies and heritage futures in light of pressing urban questions. 

Svava Riesto currently leads the project Women in Danish Architecture 1925-1975. A new history of practice and gender together with Henriette Steiner (2021-2024).

Svava Riesto teaches and lectures internationally and has been invited to present her research at Columbia University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, MIT, ETH Zürich, TU Delft, VU Amsterdam, University at Buffalo and more. 

 

Publications

Svava Riesto is the author of Untold Stories. On women, gender and architecture in Denmark  (co-written by Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen, Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner, Strandberg Publishing 2023), Biography of an Industrial Landscape: Carlsberg’s Urban Spaces Retold (Amsterdam University Press 2017), ByWomen. A guidebook to everyday architecture in Greater Copenhagen (Ikaros Press, 2021, with Liv Løvetand Rahbek and Henriette Steiner). She has co-edited Vademecum: 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places (NAi Publishers 2020, with Havik, Pint and Steiner), European Mass Housing Landscapes (special issue of Landscape Research with Braae, Tietjen, Steiner, 2021) and Forankring i Forandring. Christiania og bevaring som ressource i byomdannelse (ed. with Tietjen, Skov, Arkitektskolens Forlag).  She has edited 10+ academic volumes on architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism, and her articles have appeared in journals such as the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Journal of Architecture and Kritische Berichte.

 

Exhibitions and outreach

With the team of Women in Danish Architecture, Svava Riesto received the IGN Science communications award in 2022 for the project’s strong engagement with the public and was nominated for the Diversity Award 2023 by the Foundation for Entrepreneurship.

As part of Aktionarkiv, she co-organizes public oral history seminars, participatory events and exhibitions to foreground actors and perspectives that don't usually make it to the archive. 

Svava Riesto co-curated the living-heritage section of the HERA-funded research-based exhibitions PuSH Public Space in European Social Housing (shown at universities and local community centres in Naples, Wroclaw, Copenhagen, Bern, 2019-2022). 

 

Current teaching, supervision and mentoring

MSc course leader, Theories and Methods of Landscape Architecture

BSc course leader, Landskabsarkitekturens historie, nutid og fremtid

MSc and BSc dissertation supervisor

 

Current post-doctoral and PhD supervision

Postdoctoral mentor for Heidi Svenningsen Kajita, (Im)possible Instructions: Inscribing Use-Value in the Architectural Design Process, international postdoc based at Newcastle University, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2019–23

PhD supervisor for Anne Pind, "Eco-feminist spatial practises: Sweden and Denmark at the beginning of the 20th Century" The Danish Academy, School of Architecture, co-supervisor

Supervision of successfully completed PhD-projects 

Nicole De Lalouviere, "Irrigation Systems of Canton Valais. Transformations in Material Culture and the Resilience of Landscape Commons", ETH Zürich. Completed 2023 (co-supervisor).

Lærke Sophie Keil: "Microhistories of Landscape Elements in Albertslund Syd: Plant Beds, a Canal and Garden Fences of Welfare", Graduated 2022 (main supervisor).

Ann-Charlott Erichsen: "Into the green facades. On the values ascribed to a popular cultural phenomenon in contemporary urban development", Graduated 2019 (main supervisor).

Past Post-doc supervision

Supervisor for postdoctoral researcher Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen Women in Danish Architecture, together with Henriette Steiner. Project funded by Realdania, the Danish Arts Foundation, National Building Fund, Dreyer’s Foundation, Karin and Georg Boye’s Foundation. 2020-2023.

 

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