Architectural Analysis and ‘Living Archives’: The Norman Foster Foundation Archive as a Pedagogical Tool at ETSAM-UPM

The creation of the New European Bauhaus indicates how crucial architects and designers are to take meaningful action in an era marked by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. In this direction, architectural archives provide an excellent field for learning from particular interpretations of the built environment. Despite its potential as a valuable tool for research, archives are often disregarded in architectural education, vacating their understanding and interpretation to art and architecture historians. But what is the role of architectural archives in the contemporary teaching of architecture? What can younger generations learn from the lessons from the past? Can archives be not only a tool for research but also a tool for practitioners? This contribution aims to share the experience of bringing together institutions that have a role in designing the built environment through an architecture educational program, enhancing a multi-directional knowledge transfer in the same spirit of the New European Bauhaus agenda. On one side, undergraduate students and professors of Architectural Analysis at the ETSAM Madrid School of Architecture (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), and on the other, the Norman Foster Foundation (NFF) through its Archive, also located in Madrid. The resulting pedagogical experiment encourages acquiring research tools that motivate new readings and understanding of archives as a proactive agency in producing a more sustainable future and society through design.