Martien de Vletter
Associate Director of Collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). Responsible for the collection’s acquisition strategy, descriptions and access, as well as its management and care. De Vletter is particularly invested in the preservation of and access to born-digital archives, which has been a main area of interest for the CCA since she assumed her role in 2012. She developed with her team the CCA’s strategy for acquiring born-digital archives, preserving often obsolete files, and making the archives accessible for research. She has published a paper on this work, titled “Don’t Be Afraid of the Digital” (2018). She also worked with Álvaro Siza, the Serralves Foundation, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation from 2014 on developing a collaborative model of custodianship for Siza’s archive. Since 2020, she has been focusing on how collection descriptions impact our understanding of historical material and their context. Prior to joining the CCA, De Vletter studied architectural history in Amsterdam and worked as the Chief Curator of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (Rotterdam) and Publisher of SUN Architecture (Amsterdam).