Archinect - News

The Cultural Landscape Foundation acquires photographer Alan Ward's archive

2023-08-31T14:19:00-04:00

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has just announced a gift of landscape photographer and architect Alan Ward’s digital archive, a donation they say provides both the public and scholars exposure to one of the profession’s most beloved practitioners.

The Sasaki Associates principal’s bequest includes 2,500 photographs. Each will be made accessible through the Alan Ward Portfolios of Designed Landscapes section of TCLF’s website and is part of the “Related Content” holdings, which currently includes over 13,000 images depicting more than 2,600 sites across the world.

Sissinghurst, Cranbrook, Kent, U.K., 1999. Photo © Alan Ward, courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

France’s iconic garden at Vaux-le-Vicomte is one recent documentary subject included in the trove, which features work from the United States and twelve other countries taken over a 50-year span. A total of 20 of 110 separate portfolios will be unveiled first as part of the launch. The TCLF says they are useful...

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.

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The Nonument Group: digitally preserving architectural treasures before they're lost

2019-08-01T16:25:00-04:00

Working with an international team of researchers and artists, Tomšič and Bricelj Baraga study, map and archive fading sites and Brutalist-style structures. They’re building a database of about 120 case studies across Europe and in former Soviet states and will be releasing a book this year.

"Using a surveying and data-collection process known as photogrammetry and a series of high-powered computer workstations, a team led by Georgios Artopoulos will create a digital model of the monument for use with virtual reality headsets or smartphones," writes the Guardian's Nate Berg about the efforts of the Nonument Group to map and document the rapidly deteriorating and severely vandalized Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist Party (also known as the Buzludzha Monument) — one of many "hidden, abandoned, unwanted or otherwise forgotten" contemporary heritage sites the group aims to digitally preserve before they're gone forever.

The badly damaged interior of the Buzludzha Monument Auditorium. Photo: Stanislav Traykov/Wikimedia Commons

Experience Frank Lloyd Wright works online through virtual tours

2018-06-21T15:31:00-04:00

Virtual tours of Frank Lloyd Wright's properties will be available online through Leica Geosystems partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. With technology services from Multivista and Matterport, detailed experiences of the architect's iconic works can be explored from exterior grounds to the interior home, including minute detailing, 3D views, and floor plans.

Taliesin West will be the first property available online here. The endeavor is part of a larger scheme by Leica Geosystems to use digital innovation to capture, document, and preserve architectural history.

Google's Open Heritage project applies cutting edge technology to architectural preservation

2018-04-30T15:43:00-04:00

Google provides open access to 3D digital archives of historic sites around the globe, which have been recorded by CyArk for preservation purposes. CyArk, a non profit organization founded in 2003, has been working to digitally record, archive, and share immersive sites with people online. Through 3D models, Street Views, and VR, viewers can experience these important sites in new and relevant ways. So far, the group has 26 sites that are digitally preserved and downloadable.

3D Laser Scan data cutaway of the interior of Tudor Place. Image: CyArk.

CyArk has recorded over 200 monuments on all 7 continents, while assisting other conservationists through engineering drawings and detailed maps. The data is archived using state of the art processes to ensure continued availability.

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...