Architectural Archives Research Articles

Review: Learning from Frank Furness: Louis Sullivan in 1873; Furness in Space: The Architect and Design Dialogues on the Late Nineteenth-Century Country House; Frank Furness: Making a Modern Library—From Gentleman’s Library to Machine for Learning; Frank Furness: Working on the Railroads; Building a Masterpiece: Frank Furness’ Factory for Art; and Face and Form: The Art and Caricature of Frank Furness

Learning from Frank Furness: Louis Sullivan in 1873 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 6 October 2012–30 December 2012 Furness in Space: The Architect and Design Dialogues on the Late Nineteenth-Century Country House Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 14 October 2012–21 December 2012 Frank Furness: Making a Modern Library—From Gentleman’s Library to Machine for Learning Kroiz Gallery, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 5 October 2012–18 January 2013 Frank Furness: Working on the Railroads Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia 17 September 2012–19 April 2013 Building a Masterpiece: Frank Furness’ Factory for Art Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 29 September 2012–30 December 2012 Face and Form: The Art and Caricature of Frank Furness Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Philadelphia 30 November 2012–19 January 2013 To mark the centennial of Frank Furness’s death, a number of educational and cultural institutions in and around Philadelphia collaborated on Furness 2012 , a series of exhibitions, a symposium, and a website that sought to place the architect, and by extension the city, securely within the modernist narrative. A quirky individual, Furness (1839–1912) wrestled with nearly every major building type of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Banks, railroad stations, libraries, educational and medical institutions, clubhouses, places of worship, urban townhouses, and country estates all bear his unmistakable stamp. Among his American contemporaries, only H. H. Richardson equaled Furness in both range and creativity. Why is Furness not better appreciated outside his native Philadelphia? That is the question Furness 2012 attempted to answer, and, in large part, it succeeded. Furness was born into a prominent and accomplished Philadelphia family in 1839, just as the city was transforming itself from a cultural capital into an industrial metropolis. He exhibited a temperamental personality, even at a young age, and he was slow in settling on a career path. A three-year placement in the Philadelphia office of the Scottish emigre architect John Fraser eventually led to a longer and more pivotal stay in the experimental New York atelier of Richard Morris Hunt, who had just returned to the United States from his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Meritorious service in the Union cavalry during the Civil War interrupted Furness’s studies permanently and marked his life indelibly. Not long after his discharge, Furness began working again with Hunt in New York, this time as an assistant, but the lure of his native city soon proved irresistible. By 1866 he had returned to Philadelphia and formed Fraser, Furness & Hewitt, in partnership with his former employer and a former assistant …

The Spies Who Came into the Modernist Fold

The Spies Who Came into the Modernist Fold: The Covert Life in Hampstead’s Lawn Road Flats draws on the field of intelligence history to cast new light on the 1934 modernist landmark in London designed by architect Wells Coates for clients Jack and Molly Pritchard. With the gradual opening of intelligence archives in Britain and Russia since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, it has come to light that between 1935 and 1942, four prominent Soviet spies made their home in the Flats. In this article, Jill Pearlman investigates why the spies chose the Flats as their place of residence. Based on extensive research in both intelligence and architectural archives, she argues that the design, program for modern living, and setting of the Flats offered the Soviet agents a residence that facilitated their espionage work.

Review: Merrion Square 250

Merrion Square 250 Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin 24 August–12 October 2012 An exhibition of eighteenth-century maps and survey drawings, Merrion Square 250 , at the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin, examined the formation of one of the city’s foremost urban spaces. An appraisal of the square, long regarded as the principal ornament of its Georgian past, the display complemented an ongoing revival of popular interest in the city’s historic fabric. Indeed, given that Dublin remains a city whose “everyday” urban character is intimately wedded to its early-modern streetscape, its Georgian squares remain central to its identity: the enclosed figure of Merrion Square is, in fact, a flagship public park, and the individual houses framing it constitute some of the city’s most distinguished office accommodations. Moreover, recent initiatives of the Dublin Civic Trust (Dublin Garden Squares Day), the Irish Architecture Foundation (one-third of the buildings open to the general public during the annual Open House event were built during the eighteenth century), and Failte Ireland, the national tourism development agency (September on the Square), confirm that “Georgian Dublin,” as both a trope and a material reality, is increasingly being made legible to, and mediated for, a broad social demographic. Established in 1976 as a charitable company, the Irish Architectural Archive (IAA) is the principal repository for records relating to Ireland’s historic built environment. Though its gallery is diminutive in area, and is suited only for small-scale displays, the IAA’s exhibit program has been consistently inventive and resourceful. Since moving in 2004 to its present home in the …

Measured Practice: Drawing a Barometer of Preservation through the Historic American Buildings Survey

Established in 1933, the Historic American Buildings Survey is the nation’s oldest federal preservation program. The collection of measured drawings, large-format (film) photographs, and historical reports created by HABS and maintained at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, has become one of the largest architectural archives in the world. Drawing for the record was one strategy for preserving valued pieces of the past and facilitating their reconstruction. The HABS collection as an object of study, therefore, can tell us about the history of preservation and the architectural practice it generated by the technologies it recorded, as well as through the places selected for documentation. This paper looks at the different approaches to HABS documentation and shows how the evolution in what was drawn, and the changes in the presentation of those structures graphically, responded to contemporary preservation demands.

An American original: on the landscape architecture career of Lawrence Halprin

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Michael Kimmelman, obituary for David Levine, New York Times, 3 December 2009. 2. See Alison Hirsh, ‘Lawrence Halprin: The Choreography of Private Gardens’, a special issue of Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 27/4, October–December 2007. An exhibition of Halprin's drawings for residential projects was mounted by the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives in the autumn of 2007. The archive of Lawrence Halprin's professional drawings, sketchbooks and papers is lodged at the Penn Archives. 3. Lawrence Halprin, ‘The Gardens of the High Sierra’, Landscape, Winter 1961–1962, pp. 26–28. See also Halprin's Notebooks published by MIT Press in 1972, where he published drawings and notes from 1960 leading up to this article ending with a tiny note ‘Gardens of the Sierra’. 4. Lawrence Halprin, Cities (New York: Reinhold Press, 1963; Rev. Ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972), p. 138. 5. There have been a great number of magazine articles, several chapters or portions thereof in books, but no books per se yet, except those by Halprin himself. See, however, Alison Hirsch, ‘Lawrence Halprin's Public Spaces: Design, Experience and Recovery. Three Case Studies’, a special issue of Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 26/1, January–March 2006, which gives an extensive bibliography of publications to that date. 6. Charles Moore, ‘Still Pools and Crashing Waves’, Changing Places, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 1986, p. 16. 7. Kenneth Helphand, Dreaming Gardens. Landscape Architecture and the Making of Modern Israel (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2002), p. 207. 8. Linda Jewell, ‘The Spirit of Stone’, Landscape Architecture, February 2006. 9. Roberta Smith, ‘George Seurat: The Drawings’, New York Times, 26 October 2007.

Jewish Identity and Egyptian Revival Architecture

Jewish Identity and Egyptian Revival Architecture Diana Muir Appelbaum Between 1798 and 1806, a highly unusual synagogue complex was built around a courtyard in the city of Karlsruhe, capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden. An enormous pair of Egyptian-style trapezoidal pylons flanked a gate that led to a courtyard, open to the sky and lined with a Doric colonnade. Buildings on three sides of the courtyard contained the rabbi's home, a school, and community offices. At the far end of the courtyard, a Grecian pediment topped the façade of the synagogue proper. The Karlsruhe synagogue (destroyed by fire in 1871) was a thoughtful attempt on the part of architect Friedrich Weinbrenner to employ a style that would evoke Jewish ancientness and also allow him to work in two avant-garde modes: Greek and Egyptian revival. Weinbrenner also attempted to evoke the Temple of Solomon itself in the layout of the Karlsruhe complex. First Kings specifies that the Temple have three parts, the ulam (a porch or vestibule, perhaps roofless), the hekhal (great hall), and the dvir (Holy of Holies), separated from the hekhal by a parochet, or curtain. At the ulam stood a pair of named columns, Boaz and Jachin. The text does not make clear whether these columns were free-standing or structural, or whether they were inside or in front of the building. Architect Weinbrenner built Boaz and Jachin as pylons in the style of the entrance to the Temple at Karnak, Egypt, the ulam as a roofless courtyard, the hekhal as the synagogue building and, inside that, the Holy of Holies as the curtained Torah Ark. Greek revival architecture was still new in Click for larger view View full resolution Image 1. Egyptian-inspired pylons at synagogue complex, Karlsruhe. Synagogue façade and pediment visible through arch. (Friedrich Weinbrenner Collection, the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania) [End Page 1] Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. Weinbrenner was one of the first German architects to visit the early Doric temples at Paestum, and they inspired not only his synagogue but also his faux-ruined Doric temple, designed for the Baden Grand-Ducal gardens.1 He was also unusual for his time in having seen ancient Egyptian buildings, albeit only in a spectacularly innovative stage set. Weinbrenner was a student in Vienna in 1791, the year of the premiere of Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute. The sets were notable for their exotic Egyptian style. Weinbrenner attended twice, and saw Mozart himself conduct.2 Although Dominique Jurasse notes that Weinbrenner's "peristyle, worship area, [and] sanctuary" design was "inspired by the Temple," the reasons for building of this and other Egyptian revival synagogues has not been satisfactorily explored.3 Weinbrenner was among the first architects to explore the idea of discovering the appropriate historicist architectural style for specific building types. During his early years in Karlsruhe, he designed an Ottoman-style building for new steam-baths, a Gothic chapel for one of the country estates of the ruling family, a small medieval fortress to serve the army as a powder magazine, and the synagogue in ancient Egyptian and Doric styles.4 Weinbrenner later abandoned this wide-ranging historicism, devoting his career to masterful application of Classical forms. His students would popularize the idea that the identity of a building should inform the choice of architectural style. And among the most intriguing of these choices this movement faced was the puzzle of identifying an appropriate historicist style for synagogues. The Temple, of course, was the ancient Jewish building most intimately familiar to Europeans for the simple reason that it is the only building that the Bible describes in detail. An architect seeking to embody ancient Jewish architecture naturally opened the Bible to the Book of Kings, only to be disappointed by the detailed descriptions of layout and utter lack of attention to style. Weinbrenner may have used Egyptian and Doric elements because they were the most ancient styles then known to Europeans. It has not previously been noted that two of Weinbrenner's students also built synagogues that evoked Jewish antiquity with nods to both Doric and Egyptian styles. In 1822, Weinbrenner's nephew...

Review: Open House Dublin

Open House Dublin . Irish Architecture Foundation. 7–9 October 2011 Henrietta Street, 8 October 2011. We are in theatrical surroundings: a short, sloped cul-de-sac in an unloved part of Dublin’s northern inner city, lined with thirteen enormous, stark Georgian houses of which a few have been restored, while the others are intact but tottering. There is a crowd of people, nervous and excited as befits the drama of the place, and jostling to be among the first to have access to number 10. Probably built in the late 1720s, this was the townhouse of Luke Gardiner, the developer who created some of the most important urban set pieces of Dublin, including this one, the city’s grandest residential street from the early eighteenth century (Figure 1). Groups of ten at a time are admitted for tours all afternoon, and are lucky to be guided by an architect who knows the much-remodeled house intimately and is from the firm that recently carried out conservation and restoration work on it. Now a Catholic convent, on any other day of the year 10 Henrietta Street is only accessible to its resident nuns and their guests. But this is Open House weekend, when buildings all over the city and suburbs of Dublin can be visited by anyone interested in architecture, and, in many cases, willing to wait in line. This year’s program involves 130 events including building visits, walking tours, exhibitions and symposia. Figure 1 10 Henrietta Street, 1720s, Dublin (Irish Architecture Foundation) The first Open House was held in London almost twenty years ago, and the idea has spread around the world. While the Open House Worldwide network has twelve official members including Open House Tel Aviv, openhousenewyork and Open House Melbourne; related events include “Doors Open” weekends in many American cities. Dublin’s Open House is distinctive in being directed by an organization with a specific …

Application of digital techniques in monument preservation

Health records for monuments are produced to provide a basis for scientific monitoring and planning of restoration work. The collected data (locations of deterioration, and architectural and historical archives) must be referenced in a single documentation platform to establish a detailed diagnosis of the state of degradation of the monument. This paper presents the application of digital techniques for production of a health record of a monument, applied to the castle of Chambord (Loire Valley, France). The first step is to provide a 3D digital reconstruction of the monument. This 3D modelling consists in constructing a finely refined and relevant graphic base to spatially reference all data acquired during the project. Topography is used to precisely locate the relative position of the main architectural components, while photogrammetry can set in detail each of these elements. The application of textures extracted from pictures on surfaces of the 3D model provides a realistic appearance. Additional data from a laser scanner can be included to detail complex forms or specific degraded areas for monitoring or documentation purpose. The state of deterioration of the structure is evaluated through a visual in situ survey. Dating and identification of rocks are determined by searching in the historical and architectural archives that are sometimes incomplete. Finally, the NUBES web-based platform is used to spatially associate data with the 3D model of the monument. This database underpins the health record of the castle of Chambord.

A Synergy model for architectural archives

The term, and hence the identity of ‘architectural archives’ is not well understood, as a simple Google search highlights. This can be seen as a failure to promote the ‘brand’ of architectural archives. However, the last two decades have witnessed the gradual consolidation of a model for an institution which benefits from the synergy between the collections of architectural archives which it holds, while organising exhibitions, dissemination and educational programmes. This article discusses the main synergy models by examining the most important institutions for architectural archives, and in particular their dissemination programmes. The problems of preserving their identity are addressed, as is the need, unavoidable in the contemporary connected world, for an international network of architectural archives.

Networking and cooperation for architectural archives/records

The article explains the specific character of architectural archives and the various uses made of these archives which are different from the uses of ‘regular’ archives. Cooperation between archivists is very important, enabling them to exchange knowledge about the handling, maintenance and use of these archives. Current architectural working practices with CAD systems is making records difficult to keep for future use and underlines the need for cooperation between archivists, architectural collections and architects during the design process. The article gives a short overview of different international networks and co-operative ventures.

Community as resource: interaction between Lawrence Halprin and the students of Gaifield High School, Seattle1

The Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania houses a splendid collection of the work of landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. Alongside dozens of other projects, including such notable works as Sea Ranch and Ghiradelli Square, is a large set of documents that illustrate his design for Seattle Freeway Park. Included in the collection for this project are a great variety of renderings, conceptual sketches, site analyses, and project files and notes; one unique item stands out — a 1971 correspondence between Lawrence Halprin & Associates and students at the local Garfield High School. This document helps elucidate both the design process Halprin employed for Seattle Freeway Park and his philosophies regarding the nature of public architecture.

Cataloguing architectural drawings

This article provides guidelines on managing architectural drawings, to help non-specialist archivists who have responsibility for these ‘non-traditional’ archives. The article gives advice on appraisal, sorting and cataloguing of drawings, based on the experience of a number of specialists working in dedicated architectural archives in the UK and abroad. Useful cataloguing terms are provided and defined, including expressions used to describe the purpose of specific kinds of drawing. The article is illustrated by three case studies, demonstrating appropriate levels of cataloguing for different types of drawing. Reference is also made to British and international cataloguing standards. Future collecting is considered too, specifically the collecting of architectural records in electronic formats.

Selecting and Shaping Digital Projects: A Blueprint for Architectural Archives

Selecting and Shaping Digital Projects: A Blueprint for Architectural Archives

The Bunshaft Tapes: A Preliminary Report

Among the material collected in the Gordon Bunshaft Papers in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Archives at Columbia University are seventeen audiocassette tapes documenting a series of interviews between Arthur Drexler (1925-1987), curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, and Gordon Bunshaft (1909-1990) of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). In these tapes, Bunshaft and Drexler proceed systematically through Bunshaft's work for SOM, with Drexler consistently probing for evidence of authorial intentionality, resisted by Bunshaft. This report considers the manner in which these tapes construct a complex “orality,” in which Bunshaft's testimony refuses the intertextual mediation implied by Drexler's questions, which themselves rely on the authority of an oral testimony to guarantee the authenticity of the answers. In turn, Bunshaft's refusals to engage with architectural discourse in the name of a pseudotransparent pragmatics demonstrate the extent of his identification with the ethos of his clients, corporate executives whose “visionary” status in the postwar period was a function of their own-discursive-privileging of pragmatic action over reflective discourse.

Architectural Archives in the Digital Era

As with records everywhere, more and more architectural records are being prepared in a digital format. Even though this format shift is taking place gradually due to the complex nature of programs used in architectural design, digital designs are quickly becoming the designs of record, especially those of three-dimensional models. The increased digital nature of architectural records, many of which are viewed as disposable by their creators, raises questions for archivists about the records' intellectual and artifactual values. In addition, archivists must deal with the vast amount of digital records, the instability of their storage media, and the short life span of most software and hardware products used to create architectural designs. Developing strategies to deal with these issues is essential to the survival of architectural records created in the late-twentieth century and by future generations.

The Place of Archives in the Universe of Architectural Documentation

Architectural drawings are not synonymous with architectural archives, but they do constitute a significant part of architectural documentation. With many of the earliest architectural collections containing only books, the interpretation of the importance of architectural drawings has changed over the years. It has been shown, however, that the primary users of architectural archives are not architects looking for design ideas, but those conducting historical research. All forms of architectural records--books, journals, models, pictures, working drawings, and specifications, to name a few--provide different intellectual content to a researcher. Therefore, the elimination of working drawings from the archival architectural record would not eliminate duplication of content, but would substantially change the documentary record available.

Appraisal of Architectural Records in Practice: The Northwest Architectural Archives

The Northwest Architectural Archives was established in 1972 as a comprehensive regional repository to acquire and preserve architectural records of building and landscape architects, engineers, contractors, interior designers, and other professional organizations in architectural fields. The appraisal of records by the Northwest Architectural Archives is based in part on its comprehensive collections development strategy as well as criteria regarding the record creators, completeness, age, current and potential users, subject matter, and how such material fits with existing collections. Underlying most appraisal decisions is the expert knowledge of the curatorial staff regarding architectural records. Preservation and conservation actions are based on condition and value of the materials. The Northwest Architectural Archives' appraisal of the contents of the Minneapolis Plan Vault demonstrates some of the factors that influence appraisal decisions. However, architectural records have their own unique appraisal questions, many of which cannot be decided globally, but must be decided at the local level based on local user and research needs.

Chronicle for 1995–1996

Christopher Baruth was appointed interim director of the American Geographical Society at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Courtney C. J. Bond, author of many map-related articles and books and Head of the Canadian Section, National Map Collection, Public (now National) Archives of Canada, 1968-1971, died 16 November 1995, aged 85. David Bosse, Curator of Maps and Newspapers at the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, left to become head of the library at Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts. David Cobb, Head of the Harvard Map Collection, was appointed editor of Meridian, published by the Map & Geography Round Table of the American Library Association. Michael R. C. Coulson was appointed editor of Cartographica, in succession to Bernard Gutsell. Edward H. Dahl was succeeded, after 12 years, as chairman of the International Society for the Curators of Early Maps by Robert W. Karrow. The election took place at the biennial meeting in Vienna in September 1995. Ed Dahl has also stepped down as associate editor of Cartographica. Oswald Dreyer-Eimbcke was appointed president of the International Map Collectors' Society. John Dwyer, Chief, Cartographic and Architectural Branch, National Archives and Records Administration, retired in September 1995. Matthew Edney was appointed Faculty Scholar of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education of the University of Southern Maine in September 1995. At the 1995 conference of the International Cartographic Association he was appointed Chair of the History of Cartography Commission, in succession to Monique Pelletier. F. G. Emmison, County Archivist of Essex, 1938-1969, and editor of the Catalogue of Maps in the Essex Record Office, 1566-1855, died 9 November 1995. Gunter Hamann, Professor of Modern History and the History of Science, University of Vienna, died 13 October 1994, aged 70. Francis Herbert was recipient of the IMCoS-R. V. Tooley Award for 1995. 228 Ralph Hyde, Curator of Prints and Maps at the Guildhall Library, London, won the second Alan Godfrey award, made in association with the British Cartographic Society, for a librarian who has furthered the use, appreciation and understanding of maps in an exceptional way. Julian Janczak, Professor of History at Wroclaw University, former Chairman of the Working Group on the History of Cartography, Institute of the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, died 11 January 1995. He was succeeded as Working Group Chairman by Stanislaw Alexandrowicz. Robert W. Karrow's, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and Their Maps has been listed as one of the 'Best Bibliographies in History' by the Bibliography and Indexes Committee of the History Section of the Reference and Adult Services Division of the American Library Association. The work was also named by Reference Quarterly as one of the best history bibliographies for 1995. William L. D. Ravenhill, former Professor of Geography at the University of Exeter, died 9 October 1995. See obituary p. 212. Stephanie A. Roper, doctoral candidate in American History at the University of Kansas, won the 1995 Ristow Prize for Cartographic History and Map Librarianship with 'Image is everything: English maps of colonial North America as promotional tools, 1530-1660'. The runner-up was Martin J. Coulter, a graduate of the University of Aberdeen, with 'John Wood's plan of the cities of Aberdeen, 1828'. Harald Sigurdsson, National and University Library of Iceland, and author of Kortasaga Islands, died 20 December 1995, aged 87. Thomas R. Smith, former professor of geography at the University of Kansas, died 7 January 1996, aged 86. At his retirement in 1981, the university map collections were named in his honour. He was the author of Maps of the 16th to 19th Centuries in the Libraries of the University of Kansas: An Analytical Cartobibliography and of studies on the Thames School of chartmakers. Themis Strongilos was elected president of the Society for Hellenic Cartography in October 1995. David Woodward has been named Arthur H. Robinson Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was also appointed a Corresponding Fellow

Les archives d’architecture privees du XXe siecle: sauvegarde et mise en valeur

The architectural heritage of the 20th century is peculiarly vulnerable; partly because modern architecture broke with tradition, it is less easily recognised as being historic and worthy of preservation. Furthermore, efforts to secure public appreciation of contemporary architecture have concentrated too narrowly on the ‘International Modern’ style at the expense of the actual diversity of this century, on certain architects at the expense of others, and on the individual building, seen by itself, at the expense of the larger environment of which it is part. To see twentieth century architecture whole, it is necessary to depend on not only buildings themselves (insofar as they survive in something like their original condition), and not only on publications (which have tended to reflect the promotion of Modernism), but also on archival sources and above all, on the private archives of architects. The value of such archives derives not only from handsome architectural drawings, which institutions are always eager to acquire, but also from account books, publicity material, models, photographs, and notebooks, and from the integrity and coherence of all this material which belongs together; it is probably the challenge represented by such a range of material which accounts for the paucity of architectural archives in the public sphere. Fortunately, a new climate of interest in architecture, which has seen the establishment of several museums of architecture and the emergence of ‘l’archivisme’ – a re-interpreting of architectural styles of the past, drawing on archival sources and influencing contemporary architectural practice via exhibition design in particular – augurs well for the future of architectural archives. In France, the Institut Français d’Architecture has been responsible for archives of 20th century architecture since 1980, and since 1988 has operated an information centre for private architectural archives in Paris and the surrounding area. Other regional architectural archives are being set up; it is to be hoped that the resulting network will help to foment a spirit which will lead to the establishment of a museum of architecture in Paris, while at the same time providing a safety-net to ensure the well-being of private architectural archives.

Canadian Architectural Archives at the University of Calgary Libraries

Les «Archives d'architecture du Canada» (The Canadian Architectural Archives) aux bibliothèques de l'Université de Calgary furent établies en 1974; les premières grandes collections entrèrent par moyen de don en 1975 et, par la suite, les Archives se sont enrichies considérablement. Les collections comprennent surtout des desseins, des dossiers et des photographies, avec quelques modèles. Les Archives ont pour objectif de favoriser Vétude et la recherche et de conserver les collections. Sont comprises dans les grandes collections celles de John B. Parkin et Associés, Arthur Erickson et Ron Thorn ainsi que plusieurs collections d'importance de Toronto, Calgary et Vancouver. Les collections sont organisées d'après les principes archivistiques de l'ordre d'entrée et de la provenance. Divers répertoires et inventaires facilitent l'accès aux projets de construction individuels et un plus large contexte biographique est fourni à l'aide d'un programme d'histoire orale. À quelques exceptions près, tous ces instruments de recherche se trouvent dans la salle de lecture des Archives; les personnes venant de l'extérieur de la ville ou de la province pourront se prévaloir d'une aide à la recherche, quoi que limitée. Les Archives fourniront, conformément aux règlements des droits d'auteur, des copies de pièces ou d'extraits pour fins de recherche, d'exposition ou de publication.