Barbara Opar and Barret Havens, column editors
Column written by Rose Orcutt, Architecture Librarian, University of Buffalo

At the University at Buffalo, undergraduates and graduate students in the School of Architecture & Planning often inquire about “reading lists” that can provide an introduction/overview to various theories, typologies, and architectural influences covered in their classes.

I consulted with seven of my architecture faculty, including the Dean of Architecture, and from them I received a number of responses and suggestions, including reading lists from Princeton and Yale. This exchange developed into discussions on the demand for other architecture related reading lists. Based on popular assignments and students’ research interests, we are creating lists on the history of Buffalo and Western New York, gender/identity in architecture, a faculty publication list, and a UB architecture and planning research centers’ reading list.

The first list compiled is made up of resources considered to be  the ‘classics’ in architecture based on the Princeton, Yale, and UB architecture faculty suggestions.  This list is not a static document, but updated routinely though my Blog at http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/blog/architecture/?page_id=1188 . Resources are arranged by years published, rather than topics, because the subjects are too varied, thus making the list unmanageable. The American Planning Association has a similar list (arranged by decades) for their top 100 essential planning books at http://planning.org/centennial/greatbooks/ .  A Pinterest page http://www.pinterest.com/ublibraries/architecture-reading-list/, developed by a library school graduate student, also highlights the classic resources. Both the Pinterest site and the blog provide direct links to the UB Library catalog record, so students can quickly refer to the resource.

2000s:

Allen, S., & Agrest, D. (2000). Practice: architecture, technique, and representation. Australia: G+B Arts International.

Balmond, C., Smith, J., & Brensing, C. (2002). Informal. Munich ; New York: Prestel.

Bergdoll, B. (2000). European architecture 1750-1890. New York: Oxford University Press.

Colquhoun, A. (2002). Modern architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Eisenman, P. (2004). Eisenman inside out: Selected writings, 1963-1988. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Foreign Office Architects., & Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, E. (2003). Phylogenesis: Foa’s ark. Barcelona: Actar.

Forty, A. (2000). Words and buildings: A vocabulary of modern architecture. New York, N.Y.: Thames & Hudson.

LeGates, R. T., & Stout, F. (2003). The city reader. London: New York.

Reiser, J., & Umemoto, N. (2006). Atlas of novel tectonics. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. 

Smithson, A. M., & Smithson, P. (2001). The charged void–architecture. New York: Monacelli Press.

1990s:

Allen, S. (1999). Points + lines: Diagrams and projects for the city. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Blaser, W. (1997). Mies van der Rohe. Basel ; Boston: Birkhauser Verlag.

Boyer, M. C. (1996). The city of collective memory: Its historical imagery and architectural entertainments. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Corner, J. (1999). Recovering landscape: Essays in contemporary landscape architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Eisenman, P. (1999). Diagram diaries. New York: Universe.

Evans, R. (1997). Translations from drawing to building and other essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Hays, K. M. (1998). Architecture theory since 1968. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

Hays, K. M. (1998). Oppositions reader: Selected readings from a journal for ideas and criticism in architecture, 1973-1984. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Jackson, J. B. (1994). A sense of place, a sense of time. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Koolhaas, R. (1994). Delirious New York: A retroactive manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Monacelli Press.

Koolhaas, R., Mau, B., Sigler, J., Werlemann, H., & Office for Metropolitan Architecture. (1998). Small, medium, large, extra-large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau. New York, N.Y.: Monacelli Press. 

Lynn, G. (1998). Folds, bodies & blobs : collected essays. [Bruxelles]: La Lettre volée.

Schneider, U., Feustel, M., Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen., & Kunstcentrum deSingel (Antwerp, B. (1999). Toyo Ito: Blurring architecture. Milan: Charta.

Venturi, R., Museum of Modern Art (New York, N., & Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. (1990). Complexity and contradiction in architecture. New York : New York: Museum of Modern Art in association with the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago.

1980s:

Banham, R. (1980). Theory and design in the first machine age. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Foster, H. (1983). The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on postmodern culture. Port Townsend, Wash.: Bay Press.

Kern, S. (1983). The culture of time and space 1880-1918. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Krauss, R. E. (1985). The originality of the avant-garde and other modernist myths. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 

Libeskind, D. (1981). Between zero and infinity: Selected projects in architecture. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications.

Le Corbusier. (1986). Towards a new architecture. New York: Dover Publications.

Lynch, K. (1984). Good city form. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Rossi, A., & Eisenman, P. (1982). The architecture of the city. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Rowe, C. (1982). The mathematics of the ideal villa, and other essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Salvadori, M., Hooker, S., & Ragus, C. (1980). Why buildings stand up: The strength of architecture. New York: Norton.

1970s:
Conrads, U. (1971). Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Tafuri, M. (1979). Architecture and utopia: Design and capitalist development. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

1960s:

Banham, R. (1969). The architecture of the well-tempered environment. [Chicago]: University of Chicago Press.

Giedion, S. (. (1967). Space, time and architecture: The growth of a new tradition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Le Corbusier, Boesiger, W., & Girsberger, H. (1967). Le Corbusier, 1910-65. New York: Praeger.

1940s:

Giedion, S. (., & Library of Robert Duncan (State University of New York at Buffalo). (1948). Mechanization takes command, a contribution to anonymous history. New York: Oxford University Press.

Barbara Opar, column editor

The purpose of this month’s column is two-fold. First of all, I wish to draw your attention to a new digital cultural heritage project. Project CHART’s Brooklyn Visual Heritage has just been launched by the Brooklyn Public Library.  This website provides access to newly digitized 19^th and 20^th century photographs and related material from the collections of the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Public Library. The project is to be lauded for its collaborative nature.

At the same time, this new project reminds me of an important work edited by Fiona Cameron and Sarah Kenderdine.  Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse was published in 2010 by MIT Press and consists of twenty essays covering different aspects of the presentation of cultural content in a digital format. Navigating Brooklyn Visual Heritage illustrates the changing nature of visual research. While cultural heritage websites have long enabled researchers to become familiar with archival content before visiting the institution(s), today’s sites serve as more than surrogates. The sites allow for interpretation of content and can create their own “story”.

In Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage, Cameron and Kenderdine present essays which address this topic as well as discuss examples of how technology can be used to further the user’s interaction with digital content. “Hyperdocuments” and inverse engineering which teams up archaeology and computer technology to advance research are two of the methods presented in this text as applications which can enhance the user experience.

Brooklyn Visual Heritage, while interdisciplinary in nature, is still an example of a more traditional site. But as you navigate this site as well as others focusing on cultural artifacts, consider how technology can and will allow for different experiences with archival material.

By Catherine Essinger

In 2010 the University of Houston’s Architecture and Art Library began collecting a diverse array of historic retail brochures, pamphlets and catalogs related to buildings and the decorative products that once filled them.  The collection features various paint and varnish pamphlets, as well as brochures from companies dealing in plumbing fixtures, fireplace heaters, tin roofing, furniture and more.  Beyond product illustration, the images capture descriptive text, specifications and price lists.  Most were published in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  While browsing the collection, one can observe American decorative style transition from the Victorian to Modern. Comforting catalogs of stick style house plans published in the 1880’s give way to sleekly appointed Art Deco bathrooms in a “Modern Plumbing” pamphlet published in 1921.

The collection includes small folios, substantial bound catalogs, and a nine panel folded brochure extolling the virtues of Curtis Kitchens.   (“What a thrill when friends say – ‘I just love your kitchen,’” declares Mrs. America 1938 on the Curtis Kitchen brochure.)

The documents in the Architecture Retail Pamphlet Collection are extremely rare.  Most are the only copy listed in OCLC.  In order to increase access to the collection, they are gradually being digitized and made freely available online in the University of Houston’s Digital Library (digital.lib.uh.edu).  At the time of this writing 21 are already available for viewing and 15 more will be ready near the end of March.  This is a growing collection, so new materials will be digitized and made available for the next few years, as well.

Users may request high-resolution copies of every image in the Architecture Retail Pamphlet Collection.  As all digitized materials are in the public domain, they may be used freely in research, teaching, and publishing, though we do request acknowledgement in any published works.

Some highlights from the current online holdings include:

J. L. Mott Iron Works. “Modern Plumbing #10.” 1921.

The J. L. Mott Iron Works was established in 1828, in an area of the Bronx now called Mott Haven.  This sleek 49 page pamphlet offers fixtures and accessories for fashionable bathrooms and industrial kitchens.

L. Bonfils & E. Fesquet. “Ornaments En Zinc.” 1900.

One of the few European catalogs in the collection, the substantial edition from Paris includes zinc campaniles (cupolas), finials of all sorts and designs, corner mouldings, lucarnes (dormer windows), vases, girouettes (weathervanes), balustrades and lambrequins.

Raymond Bonnefond . “Marqueterie D’Art.” 1932.

In addition to the traditional Classical, fruit and floral, and jazz-era motifs one might expect from this catalog published in 1932, customers could order the visage of Lenin, Benito Mussolini, or French Prime Minister Raymond Poincare in marquetry.   Veneer makes strange bed-fellows.

Ramp Buildings Corporation . “The Modern Garage.” 1929.

The Ramp Buildings Corporation was established in 1920.  This 1929 booklet makes the case for that recent development, the “automobile hotel”:

Some other items already available online:

Berlin Iron Bridge Co.. “The Berlin Iron Bridge Co..” 1889.
Built-in Fixture Company. “Peerless Built-in Furniture.” 1926.
C. Schrack and Co.. “Architectural Varnish List.” ca. 1930.
Caldwell & Peterson Manufacturing Company. “Continuous Tin Roofing.” 1890.
Come-Packt Furniture Company. “Sectional Come-Packt Furniture.” 1912.
Glidden Varnish Company. “Jap-A-Lac.” 1890.
Homestead Heater Company. “Homestead Fires.” 1935.  “Truly appropriate
fireplace heaters” – Cover.
M. Macdonald & Co.. “Steeplejacks.” 1920.
Murphy Door Bed Company . “The Murphy In-A-Dor Bed.” 1926. (sic)
Red Cedar Shingle Bureau. “Red cedar shingles: artistic and practical.”
Red Cedar Shingle Manufacturers’ Association. “Red cedar shingle.”
Scranton Lace Company. “Scranton: New outlooks for every home.”
Sears, Roebuck and Company. “How to paint.”
Shingle Branch of West Coast Lumberman’s Association/Shingle Agency of British
Columbia. “Distinctive homes of Red Cedar Shingles.” ca. 1910.
Wm. B. Gleason & Co. . “Natural Wood Ornaments for Furniture Maufacturers,
Architects, Builders,
Interior Decorators…: Illustrated Price List.” 1882.

Pamphlets being digitized as of this writing include several catalogs of early 20^th century storefronts, metal ceilings and walls, mid-century windowalls, Art Deco and Moderne lighting, both American and British ironworks, and Arts and Crafts-style metal casements and stained glass.

Researchers will find new and developing collections on art and architecture from the College of Architecture’s rare books room whenever they visit digital.lib.uh.edu/aa.   Expect new additions to the Architecture Retail Pamphlet Collection every few months.    Our goal is to provide historians with a window into the evolving design styles available to customers in the U.S. and elsewhere in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Please contact archlib@uh.edu with questions or feedback about the collection.