Architecture Research Guide  Tags: architecture urban_planning landscape_architecture building  

Welcome to the Architecture Research Guide!

This site is intended to help researchers find the resources they need by providing links to article and image databases, library resources, Internet portals and other reference tools.  It augments the Architecture Research Blog begun by Dr. Keli Rylance at the Tulane Libraries. While this page provides quick links to resources, the blog includes narrative examples of the ways in which these resources may be used to solve research problems.  Additionally, it includes citation models for images and text, as well as listings of current events and thematic issues.

If you need instant help, chat with a librarian using the Chat box on the right--->
---or call the Howard-Tilton Library reference desk @ (504) 865-5606

These are some helpful guides to conducting research related to architectural history, construction and visual design: 

Borden, Iain.  The Dissertation: An Architecture Student's Handbook.  Amsterdam & Boston: Architectural Press, 2006.  ARCH Reference NA2108.B67 2006

Fellows, Richard. Research Methods for Construction.  Oxford: Blackwell Science, 1997. Available electronically via netlibrary.  First-time users must set up an account {http://www.netlibrary.com/urlapi.asp?action=summary&v=1&bookid=51930}

Groat, Linda N. Architectural Research Methods.  New York:  Wiley, 2002.  ARCH NA2000.G76 2002

The New York Public Library.  Researching an Architectural Structure.  Online at:  http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/artarc/archit/research.html

Sanoff, Henry.  Visual Research Methods in Design.  New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991.  ARCH NA2750.S25 1991

Citing sources properly is an essential component of sound research practice.  The following resources can facilitate the process:

COMING SOON:  CHAIRS: 125 Years of Design

This exhibition of prints, drawings, vintage photographs and ephemera illustrates the profound aesthetic, cultural, societal and technological changes that have impacted chair design over the last 125 years.  Highlights include seating furniture by A.W.N. Pugin (1812-1852), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), James Lamantia (1923-), and Curtis & Davis (active 1947-1978).

9 November 2009-10 November 2010

  

 

 

 

 

Architext: The Unity of Architecture and Typography

Co-curated by Keli Rylance and Kevin Williams.  

October 2008-November 2009

This exhibition covered a wide range of architectural letter forms, from the Renaissance and its introduction of classically-derived alphabets in the service of architecture and typography to the mid-twentieth century's attempts at a  universal alphabet. Letters devised by Albrecht Durer, Geoffroy Tory, Johann-David Steingruber and Berthold Wolpe were included, as were the lettering  designs of New Orleans architects Moise Goldstein, William Nolan, Douglass Freret, Albert Wolf, Herbert Benson and George Riehl.

The Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, has just announced the online availability of its Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Checklist, an new version of the popular but out-of-print Library publication entitled "Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress: Plans of North American Cities and Towns produced by the Sanborn Map Company (Library of Congress, 1981).  The new website can be accessed directly via  http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/sanborn/

This checklist describe the nearly 700,000 sheet collection of maps published by the Sanborn Map Company from 1867 to the 1960’s in the Library's collection, the single largest and most comprehensive collection of maps published by the Sanborn Map Company.  These maps were acquired by the Library as a result of copyright deposits, government agency transfers, and gifts. For those who may be unaware, fire insurance maps and plans show detailed, accurate and large scale building “footprints” of individual structures and are often the earliest large scale urban
mapping available for small cities.

In addition to a searchable database which lists all editions and number of sheets for each city/town/village represented in the collection, the online checklist will be continually updated to reflect new acquisitions.  Most importantly, the online checklist contains links to existing downloadable digital images from the collection and will be continually updated as new digital images are added to the online checklist.

The web site includes essays on the history of large scale mapping related to fire insurance efforts and examples of how large scale maps can be used by historians, geographers, and researchers in virtually any discipline.

For additional information contact Ed Redmond, Library of Congress,
Geography and Map Division at ered@loc.gov

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