Archinect - News

Eames Institute unveils new Eames Archives space in the Bay Area

2024-02-01T18:24:00-05:00

The nearly two-year-old Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity has shared news of its arrival in a new permanent home in the San Francisco Bay Area that will consolidate its archival collection under one roof for the first time.

The new location helps the Institute engage with the collection, which had until now been warehoused at the Eames Office global headquarters in Venice, California. The new Eames Archives will now be housed and exhibited in a gallery space located in Richmond, California, about 15 minutes north of Oakland.

Ray & Charles Eames. Image courtesy Eames Office

Plans had been originally to have the archive located at the Eames Institute’s ranch complex in nearby Sonoma County. Now, the nonprofit's first public space includes a Gallery, Collections Center, and Archives Study Center for its more than 40,000 artifacts overseen by dedicated on-site preservation specialists. A small gift shop bookends the experience. The Eames Institute says this is all vital to making it...

Toyo Ito donates early-career archive to the Canadian Centre for Architecture

2023-12-06T17:21:00-05:00

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has just announced its acquisition of architect Toyo Ito’s early-career archive.

The trove entails drawings, models, and sketches related to his practice Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects (founded as Urban Robot) from 1971 until 1989. The CCA says the donation will help researchers establish a better through line from the 2013 Pritzker Prize winner's early-career work in dialogue with its other archival holdings. The decision was made in September after 82-year-old Ito apparently determined he could not find an “appropriate place” in his home country in which to store the collection, according to The Yomiuri Shimbun.

In a press announcement, Ito said: “The CCA is an architectural museum and research center I have the utmost trust in. Upon this donation, I received requests from many Japanese architects and researchers, asking if it is possible to keep those archives in Japan. However, I have the confidence that CCA offers unparalleled ac...

Moshe Safdie donates entire archive to McGill University

2022-08-23T14:42:00-04:00

The professional archive of renowned Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie will now be housed at his alma mater McGill University, the school announced today.

The Habitat 67 designer will also donate his restored private apartment in the famed modular housing complex, along with the undergraduate thesis titled “A Case for City Living” that led to its inception as part of the Expo 67 exhibition in Montreal 55 years ago.

The apartment (which was not previously managed by the university) and thesis are just two of the more than 100,000 total pieces included in the donation. McGill says the archive “represents one of the most extensive and thorough individual collections of architectural documentation in Canada” and that it expects the gift to provide “an abundance of opportunity for exploration” to the university and design-minded community writ large.

Special announcement ceremony of Moshe Safdie's archive donation at McGill University. Video via McGill University on YouTube.

At th...

Norman Foster Foundation presents 'On Archives' masterclass series

2021-08-13T16:59:00-04:00

The Norman Foster Foundation has released a new series of 14 masterclasses, titled “On Archives,” a follow-up of the “On Cities” series released in the Spring.

This edition explores the fundamental aspects related to architectural archives and libraries around the world, with episodes featuring leading experts in the fields of archiving, architecture, art, design, and heritage management. The video series supports the Foundation's educational initiative that aims to promote cross-disciplinary and trans-geographic exchange.

Previously on Archinect: Norman Foster launches 'On Cities' masterclass series

“While archives have, for centuries, been the core of cultural, historic and artistic institutions, these online lessons also acknowledge the relevance of archives for the performance of other disciplines, such as architecture and design, and for the future of society,” reads the Foundation’s announcement.

"On Archives" Masterclass Series, extended trailer. Video: Norman Foster Founda...

Paul Revere Williams archive acquired by USC School of Architecture and Getty Research Institute

2020-06-30T10:38:00-04:00

The architectural archives of prolific 20th century architect Paul Revere Williams, long thought to have been lost to fire during the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, have been jointly acquired by the University of Southern California School of Architecture and the Getty Research Institute (GRI).

Rather than being lost, however, according to an announcement published by the Getty Research Institute, the archive had been "meticulously cared for by Karen Elyse Hudson, Williams’ granddaughter, who has published extensively on his work."

Hudson explains in the statement that "Paul Williams led by example and instilled in his children and grandchildren the importance of excellence, an attention to detail, and above all, family. The collaboration of two such esteemed institutions, the University of Southern California (USC) and Getty Research Institute (GRI), to preserve and further his legacy, would make our grandfather extremely proud.” She adds that “as the family historian, my journey has b...

Syracuse University's Lawrence Chua named among 34 Getty Scholar grantees

2020-06-08T18:16:00-04:00

Lawrence Chua, an assistant professor at the Syracuse University School of Architecture, has been awarded a 2020-21 Getty Scholar Grant from the Getty Research Institute (GRI) to study "transregional histories of utopia and the architecture and urban culture of southeast Asia."

According to the Syracuse University News, this year's research cohort is focused on pursuing investigations that seek to deepen scholarly efforts around the topic of "the fragment" and are set to focus on objects of study that remain in less-than-whole forms. The research also considers intact art and cultural objects as "fragments" of the larger cultures that generated these items. The Syracuse website states, "Incoming Getty Scholars are invited to address both the creation and reception of fragments, their mutability and mobility, and their valuation and consequence throughout history."

Previously on Archinect: "Lebbeus Woods drawing collections are acquired by the Getty Research Institute."Selection from...

"Mistresses of Pratt" honors the legacy of female educators at Pratt Institute's School of Architecture

2020-03-14T14:00:00-04:00

Pratt Institute in New York City has launched a new initiative honoring and celebrating the institution's historic legacy of female design leadership. Organized by the School of Architecture, the Mistresses of Pratt program presents "a multifaceted project focused on the contributions to architecture and planning education by female-identifying faculty and alumnae."

Kicking off the initiative at a Dinner Party on March 9th, Dean Harriet Harris shared, "To be mistresses is to reclaim your right to public life—to leadership, to expertise, to autonomy, and to simple equality. Pratt is a school strongly associated with many such women both historically and among us today, and we are here to launch the beginning of what will become an institute-wide Mistresses Archive—an initiative determined to restore Pratt women to their respective disciplinary canons, one school at a time."

Image courtesy of Mistresses of Pratt/Prat Institute School of Architecture

Included among the list of honorees...

The archived works of Cape Cod-style architect Royal Barry Wills are now publicly available

2020-03-13T13:08:00-04:00

Historic New England, one of one of the oldest and largest regional architectural heritage organizations in the United States, has announced that the archives of Boston-based architecture firm Royal Barry Wills Associates will be made available to the public for the first time. Founded in 1925, Royal Barry Wills, FAIA is famously known for its mastery of the iconic Cape Cod-style house, in addition to other notable projects reflecting Colonial Revival designs.

The collection was made possible by Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and Wills' son, who donated a majority of the firm's archives to Historic New England in 2013. Consisting of architectural drawings, photographs, negatives, and other firm documents dating between the 1920s and 2003, the collection is another example of organizations aiding in providing access to pieces of architectural history.

By digitizing and cataloging the collection, Historic New England will provide the public with an account of Wills' ...

Lebbeus Woods drawing collections are acquired by the Getty Research Institute

2020-01-17T16:09:00-05:00

The Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles has acquired two collections of drawings and sketches by visionary architect Lebbeus Woods.

Woods passed away in 2012 after a long career as a radical, inventive architectural designer who created thousands of fantastical visions for foreboding futuristic architectures. The GRI has acquired 46 drawings from Woods's A-City and 4 Cities and Beyond projects. The two speculative works offer beguiling pen and ink as well as color pencil visions for futuristic settlements that appear idyllic and tragic all at once.

Selection from the Los Angeles sketchbook, Lebbeus Woods, 1986–1988. Getty Research Institute, 2018.M.25. Gift of The Woods Edge Partnership. © Estate of Lebbeus Woods

Woods was born in Lansing, Michigan and worked at Eero Saarinen and Associates under Kevin Roche before launching his own independent, speculative practice in the 1970s. Woods also taught around the world, including at the Cooper Union in New York City. Woods's p...

Digitized Isamu Noguchi archives are now available online

2019-11-27T15:00:00-05:00

Noguchi heads rejoice! The archives of Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi have been digitized and made available to the public via a online archive and portal.

Hyperallergic reports that the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York has made 60,000 archival items, including 28,000 photographs, as well as letters, architectural drawings, plans, and other items, available for public viewing on its website, which is being optimized for easy research use through the addition of research texts and other materials that are generated through the use of the archives. The archive is made possible by a collaboration between the Noguchi Museum and Catalogue Raisonné.

The trove includes items spanning the artist's nearly 70-year-long career that convey Noguchi's multi-medium virtuosity as well as the changing styles and approaches to design and art that took shape throughout the 20th century. The latest updates to the site focus on Noguchi's earliest works, which date to the 1920s and 1930s.

A ch...

ArtCenter aims to explore visionary design "Beyond the Bauhaus"

2019-11-10T09:00:00-05:00

Different Tomorrows: Design Futures Beyond the Bauhaus [...] brought together scholars, artists, activists and designers to challenge the Bauhaus as the movement of record with discussions related to gender, race and global perspectives. Organized by graduate Media Design Practices Department Associate Professor Sean Donahue and Professor Elizabeth Chin, the series included a reading room, [...] projects questioning the Bauhaus legacy, and a docent tour of the Getty Center’s Bauhaus archives.

A thoughtful interview with Elizabeth Chin and Sean Donahue, the two ArtCenter College of Design-based organizers behind Different Tomorrows: Design Futures Beyond the Bauhaus reveals a bevy of interesting and thought-provoking connections between the Bauhaus and a variety of topics and locales, including the movement's connections with China, the work of the school's female practitioners, and other suppressed focuses.

Chin writes, "The version of the Bauhaus that was promoted in the U.S., and which has influenced places like ArtCenter, was stripped of many of the concerns that had fueled the development of the Bauhaus. Two of the most important, from our point of view, were the experimental educational model and the school’s concerns for social well-being."

Mies van der Rohe’s Mansion House Square archive joins the RIBA Collections courtesy of Lord Palumbo

2018-10-09T13:36:00-04:00

Lord Palumbo has given Mies van der Rohe's Mansion House Square archive—which includes models, photographs, and films—to the RIBA Collections. Considered one of the most important collections of architectural materials in the world, the donation to RIBA is an important step in preserving the design records and more broadly, for "documenting the stories behind architecture," says RIBA President, Ben Derbyshire.

The seminal gift from the property developer and architecture connoisseur contains three large-scale models: one of the city of London; one of Mies van der Rohe's unrealized proposal for the Mansion House Square; and another of the building's underground shopping concourse. It also includes original feasibility drawings, bronze door handles and hinges, photomontages by architectural photographer John Donat and historical documents and objects related to the hotly-debated development.

Model of Mies van der Rohe's building for Mansion House Square. © RIBA Collections.

Despite ne...

2018 Korean Pavilion for Venice Biennale explores hidden narrative between modern Korean architecture and the state

2018-04-23T14:24:00-04:00

In response to the 2018 Venice Biennale's “Freespace” theme, the Korean Pavilion exhibition, “Spectres of the State Avant-garde”, sheds light on a hidden narrative of Korea's paradoxical pursuit of a utopian society through oppressive government policy.

Choon Choi, Paradise Lost 100 Days of Ennui, Desire, and Privation, 2018 © Choon Choi.

Curated by Seongtae Park, founding director of the Junglim Foundation in Seoul, the exhibition is an imagined archive that focuses on the contradictions embedded in the projects designed by the Korea Engineering Consultants Corp (KECC) — a technical consultancy for architecture and civil engineering that the government created in 1963. The KECC dominated Korea's architecture and construction industry, sometimes imitating architectural experiments from the West but mostly following the state's developmental agenda.

Four KECC projects from the late ’60s, which all served as nation-building propaganda, will be highlighted: the Expo Pavilion for the ...

Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, prominent Frank Lloyd Wright archivist, dies at 87

2018-01-03T14:46:00-05:00

Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, who organized Frank Lloyd Wright’s massive archives and wrote or edited more than 50 books about the buildings, ideas and career of the legendary architect, died Sunday in Scottsdale, Ariz., according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. “He is almost single-handedly the person who organized the archives,” said Barry Bergdoll [of MoMA]

Chicago Tribune architectural critic Blair Kamin pens an obituary for Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer. Born in 1930 in South Natick, Massachusetts, Pfeiffer studied as Frank Lloyd Wright's apprentice in 1949. He eventually went on to become the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation's director of archives, organizing Wright's thousands of drawings, blueprints, photos, models, letters, and manuscripts that were left behind when the architect died in 1959. Pfeiffer was 87.

Penn State's College of Arts and Architecture launches digital photo archive

2017-07-31T13:49:00-04:00

After three years of planning and design, the College of Arts and Architecture has launched a public, searchable photo archive of images from within the college. The online photo archive, Arts and Architecture Resource Collaborative (AARC), is the product of a partnership among the College of Arts and Architecture Alumni and Communications Office, the Visual Resources Centre (VRC), and Arts and Architecture Information Technology (AAIT).

"AARC features images provided by multiple photographers with search criteria customized for the college, including department names, keywords, proper names and dates. Through a series of focus groups with key users and uploaders, the AARC team built a robust metadata structure, providing easy access and user-friendly instructions for searching and uploading images."

Humanities go digital with archive of historic Rome

2017-07-26T19:42:00-04:00

A multidisciplinary team of researchers from University of Oregon, Stanford and Dartmouth have co-developed a new digital archive. The collection contains nearly 4,000 drawings, prints, paintings and photographs of historic Rome from the 16th to 20th centuries that are now available online to the public. The Rodolfo Lanciani Digital Archive brings together pieces collected by Lanciani, a renowned Roman archaeologist, and reflect Rome’s transformation over the centuries. The physical collection is housed in the Palazzo Venezia.

UO architecture Professor James Tice, principal investigator for the Rodolfo Lanciani Digital Archive, notes the project makes accessible “a precious archival collection and demonstrates how similar materials can be made available to scholars, students and the general public through the digital humanities.”

Porto di Ripetta

Erik Steiner, co-director of the Center for Textual and Spatial Studies (CESTA) at Stanford, observes, “this is part of our long-term amb...

MoMA celebrates Frank Lloyd Wright's 150th birthday with comprehensive exhibition of his archives

2017-06-06T13:58:00-04:00

If you've ever wanted to see the original physical model of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in person, you're in the luck: starting June 12th (with a live-streamed press preview on June 8th, which you can watch here), the Museum of Modern Art will display its Frank Lloyd Wright archive to celebrate the legendary architect's 150th birthday. Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, which includes drawings, building fragments, never before seen photographs, film clips and other iconic leavings, will be publicly viewable until October 1st. (PS: For further Frank Lloyd Wright coverage, keep your eyes peeled: Archinect is working on some special pieces for FLW's actual birthday, June 8th.)

Digging through architectural treasures at the Avery Drawings and Archives

2017-04-27T17:39:00-04:00

Uptown and underground is the home of a dense community of New York architects, their colleagues, clients, and friends, their skyscrapers and townhouses. They are the denizens of the boxes and the file folders of the Avery Drawings and Archives, one of the richest collections of American architectural drawings and records. For the last 36 years, Janet Parks, curator [...], has been mayor of this town, located in the lower level of Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library.

"The trove of drawings, which took a good 18 months to sort through, contained the physical traces of a long-gone city — and not just how it looked. Parks remembers opening a tightly sealed tube of drawings: “This wafting smell of cologne and pipe tobacco came out. It had been trapped inside. We all stood around it and we were back in the 1920s.”"

Getty Research Institute acquires massive Frank Gehry archives

2017-03-29T17:50:00-04:00

The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles acquired a seriously massive archive directly from the studio of Frank O. Gehry today. Dubbed The Frank Gehry Papers, the archives — which were granted as part gift and part purchase — reveal a comprehensive overview of the first 30 years of the architect's career, from his early graduate studies to his milestone 1988 competition entry for the Walt Disney Concert Hall that launched him into global fame.

“I’m honored by the attention of the Getty Research Institute delving into the history of my work, my beginnings, and other things that I never thought anybody would be interested in,” Frank Gehry said in a statement. “I’m very moved that this great institution, with its resources to search for the best examples of creativity in our world, has found me an interesting party.”

Frank Gehry, Greber Studio, Sketch1967, unbuilt, Beverly Glen, California, Frank Gehry Papers at the Getty Research Institute, © Frank O. Gehry.

Frank Gehry, Sirmai-Peters...

MoMA makes all its museum exhibition archives available online

2016-09-18T17:24:00-04:00

Exhibitions from our founding in 1929 to the present are available online. These pages are updated continually.

Go ahead and dig in! All there, including architecture. Now, that's a museum service.

The unusual tale of how Luis Barragán became a diamond

2016-07-26T15:28:00-04:00

Magid agrees with those who argue that the Barragán archive should be open to the public and returned to Mexico, but she insists that this is not her focus. “If that’s what my intentions were, I don’t think I’d make art,” she told me. “I’ve always called the archive her lover. To marry one man, she negotiated owning another man, whom she’s devoted her life to. It’s a weird love triangle, and I’m the other woman.”

“‘It intrigued me as a gothic love story,’ [Magid] said, ‘with a copyright-and-intellectual-property-rights subplot.’”

A fascinating story about “architectural preservation” that focuses on an artist's elaborate negotiation to open Luis Barragán's tightly controlled archive to the public in his native Mexico — and the unusual “love triangle” behind it. The story begins with conceptual artist Jill Magid, whose work questions the boundaries of institutional power and law. In her latest performance art piece, Magid had Barragán's ashes compressed into a 2.02 carat diamond, which was transformed into an engagement ring for architectural historian Federica Zanco. Magid would then “propose” to Zanco in exchange for Barragán's entire archive.

Zanco first received the archive as a gift from a Swiss businessman who purchased it and the copyrights for $3 million in 1995, in lieu of an engagement ring. Since then, everyone from architects to students to museum staff members have been denied acc...

Editor's Picks #444

2016-04-13T17:48:00-04:00

ICYMI Amelia Taylor-Hochberg published a 3 part interview with Coy Howard, by students in John Southern's “Architectural Media and Publishing” Cultural Studies seminar at SCI-Arc. Ewa Lenart was impressed "Great Work and greatly inspiring teacher!"

Plus, Nicholas Korody explored ‘Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work’ by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams. Chris Teeter thought it was "good work...very interesting...these guys are 100% correct about scale".

News
Dame Zaha Hadid DBE passed on March 31st. Frank Gehry remembered "she was one of the guys...[That’s] sexist in its own way I suppose. I don’t mean it that way...She was undaunted by all the stuff that would be against a woman coming into a field at that level. She didn’t pay attention to it…She was very confident."

Daniel Elmore criticized some of commentary "She deserves to be remembered not as one of the best 'female architects' but one of THE BEST architects of our time...A visionary before her time and a...

New Heneghan Peng-designed Palestinian Museum to open in May 2016

2015-08-21T16:30:00-04:00

A new museum dedicated to the history and culture of Palestine over the last two centuries is due to open in May next year in Birzeit...In a controversial move, the planned launch date coincides with the 68th anniversary of the Nakba, when the Israeli state was established in 1948 and more than 750,000 Palestinians went into exile. 'The decision to open the museum on May 15 is designed to underline the enduring importance of the Nakba to the museum’s work,' says [museum director] Jack Persekian

Herzog & de Meuron's Kabinett shares their entire estate since 1978

2015-06-18T19:14:00-04:00

Herzog and de Meuron no doubt has a wealth of archival material attached to each of their projects - all valuable pieces of information that are often rarely seen outside the architects' main HQ...The Kabinett is a charitable foundation set up in Basel to make the celebrated architects' estate accessible to the public. Establishing this initiative in their home town...has been a 'lifelong aspiration' for the duo.

Herzog and de Meuron recently issued a press statement through the Kunstmuseum Basel announcing their Kabinett project, which features categorized cabinets consisting 'all the items and materials that were produced, collected, and archived' by the firm since its founding in 1978. The estate will be available for loans to local museums and institutions, and the Kunstmuseum Basel will have exclusive access. Experts and researchers can visit the archives upon request.

Read the full statement here.

Design archives of Jackie Kennedy's Wexford House to be auctioned

2015-02-06T20:48:00-05:00

Over 400 pieces that archive the construction and design of the presidential Kennedy family's Wexford House will soon be up for sale at a live auction on February 19 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts that will be hosted by Boston-based auction company RR Auction. Bidding begins February 12-18.

The vast collection consists of three large binders and two large folders that contain oversized building plans, paperwork, photographs, magazine tearouts with Jackie's written design notes, and handwritten correspondence that covers almost all the construction and design aspects of the Wexford House -- including 10 letters that Jackie penned herself. The collection spans from 1961-64 with emphasis on 1963, the main year of construction.

The story behind the Wexford House reads like a saccharine yet bittersweet tale of the elusive American Dream. Named by Jackie as a nod to JFK's Irish roots, the Wexford House was constructed from late 1962 and completed in the summer of 196...

Álvaro Siza donates his architectural archives to institutions in Portugal and Canada

2014-07-24T18:53:00-04:00

Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza this week announced to donate his architectural archive to public architectural institutions in Portugal and Canada. The decision was motivated by Siza's desire of fostering discussion and dialogue in a research-oriented context.

One part of the archive will be donated to the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, and the other part will be given to two Portuguese institutions, the Fundação Gulbenkian in Lisbon and the Fundação de Serralves in Porto.

“The CCA is thrilled to accept this generous donation," remarked CCA Director Mirko Zardini. "I have known Álvaro Siza and followed his work closely for several decades. His architecture escapes easy classification, but always offers a lesson – a new way of seeing the world around us. His buildings have a distinct character and particular relationship to their urban or natural settings, always born from the desire to participate in the world. Siza’s drawings and sketches reflect his ability to...

Help The Draftery on Kickstarter

2013-05-22T11:06:00-04:00

The Draftery is a curated drawing archive with multiple platforms. We promote graphic works by lesser known architects, artists, students, and other practitioners.

Along with our web-based Archive, we also publish Figures, our printed biannual. It is the only journal that we know of that continuously places contemporary architectural representation at the forefront of discourse. Each issue of Figures showcases a selection of thematically-related architectural drawings.

We are currently working on producing the third issue of Figures, but we need help raising funds to cover production costs. We have launched a Kickstarter campaign that can be found here: http://kck.st/10FAFfE

We've worked hard to keep the conversation alive. With our third issue, our goal is to broaden the journal's audience base as well as offering it at a higher quality. We hope that members of this community will join us in producing this issue by sharing this news to their networks, and if able, pledgin...

The physical architecture of the Internet Archive

2013-05-08T15:08:00-04:00

This film was shot in October last year when the Internet Archive celebrated a landmark --10 petabytes of stored media. Tour the space, which still looks more like a church than a library and see where millions of books are digitized and stored in a facility in Richmond, CA.

Architect William McDonough becomes the first living archive at Stanford University

2013-03-25T19:24:00-04:00

This means that the architect, a leader in sustainable development, has started filming all of his meetings and recording all of his phone conversations. He will send them in something close to real time to Stanford, which will be making much of the material immediately accessible on the Internet. Even presidents are not observed so closely and so continuously.

Editor's Picks #284

2012-10-01T01:10:00-04:00

This week, SANAA released a proposal for its first building in the United States , located in New Canaan, Connecticut. The steel, concrete, and wood headquarters for the Grace Farms Foundation will wind its way along a piece of the 75-acre property owned by the nonprofit charitable organization. FRaC labeled it a "running fence" yet, AP simply "love(d) it".

News
Caela J. McKeever a self-described "young architect" penned How the economy upended young architects' hopes. The piece looks at how frustrated architecture grads of her generation are dropping out of the profession leading to a "renaissance happening among young architects — and it’s not in architecture". Fred Scharmen argued "The concerns the author highlights are real, but IMO, not traceable directly back to the economy, rather to the failure of many offices to respond to the opportunities laid out by the current crisis. Models of office hierarchy, project delivery, marketing, and client relations need to change. ...I was lucky enough to have experience with one office that recognized this, and is in the process of adapting" while Given replied "I have to say of all the complaints I have against the profession, the ones she makes aren't really the ones I care about...Id much rather fix the growing trend towards the field being divided between rich young people doing high ...