Artstor has now made available the Avery/GSAPP Architectural Plans and Sections Collection, a set of approximately 10,000 digital images of architectural drawings. The project was co-developed by Avery Library, GSAPP, and Artstor, and released this week by Artstor. From the ArtStor blog, October 20, 2015:
Artstor, the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), and the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library are now sharing approximately 10,000 images of architectural plans and sections and related materials in the Digital Library.
The collection, which is projected to include 20,000 images, is based on GSAPP’s history of modern architecture curriculum and covers the history of modern buildings, focusing primarily on 20th-century modernism, with a few earlier and later projects spanning from 1871 to 2013. Comprising 1,000 projects from 44 countries, the majority of them of built works, the Plans and Sections project also includes documentation of unbuilt projects and of competitions such as the Chicago Tribune Tower and the Lenin Library. This collaboration makes this rich body of visual material and related scholarship available online for the first time.
The collection is available through the following links:
Avery/GSAPP Architectural Plans and Sections
Artstor (Princeton University Library database link)
image above from the Artstor blog: Rem D. Koolhaas, Two Libraries for Jussieu University (first floor section and condensed section), 1992. Data source: Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University and Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. © 2014 OMA AMO / Beeldrecht / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
New Suburbanism
Critical Path (RPM)
Project: The Living City (revision of Broadacre City, 1934)
Great Buildings A searchable, gateway site to plans, drawings and photographs of buildings worldwide throughout history. Mst entries include a drawing or plan.
U.S. Historical City Maps Digitized maps from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the Univ. of Texas, Austin.
HABS/HAER/HALS (1933-Present): The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections online collections include measured drawings, black-and-white photographs, color transparencies, photo captions, data pages including written histories, and supplemental materials. Since the National Park Service's HABS, HAER, and HALS programs create new documentation each year, digital images will continue to be added to the online collections.
Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Tall Buildings Database: Contains information on 10,000+ buildings – including height information, number of floors, function, structural material, location, professions involved, building images etc. This information is free for download and searchable by a number of parameters, including year, location, type etc. Users can create their own lists, which can be captured in pdf format, or transferred via graphs and other outputs.
Digital Sanborn Maps & Sanborn Maps Geo Edition: Founded in 1867 by D. A. Sanborn, the Sanborn Map Company was the primary American publisher of fire insurance maps for nearly 100 years. The maps are large-scale plans containing data used to estimate the potential risk for urban structures. This includes the outline of each building, the size, location of windows and doors, construction materials, and function of structures. The maps also give street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, and house and block numbers. The Digital and Geo Editions both cover 1867-1970. Firestone's Special Collections division has digitized the Sanborn Maps of NJ from 1885-1927.
