Browse Exhibits (28 total)

The Legacy of Edith Heath

From just a handful of clay, ceramicist Edith Heath pioneered a design aesthetic that continues to inspire today and earned her the AIA Industrial Arts Medal in 1971 for the Heath tile on the Norton Simon Museum (formerly the Pasadena Art Museum). Her focus on simplicity, functionality, and durability blends the line between daily use and Sunday best and continues to have a lasting impact on the design community. Heath products, from tile to stoneware, have been recognized internationally for their quality and vision.

The exhibition explores her life as an artist and ceramicist, as well as her collaborations with architects. Materials come from the Environmental Design Archives, the Brian and Edith Heath Foundation, and Heath Ceramics.

Environments for Entertainment

As Americans' leisure time has increased during the century, we have filled it with all manner of diversions.  This exhibit highlights the buildings and landscapes in which we seek respite from the stresses of daily life.  Grouped thematically as things to watch, play, eat and buy, the focus is on spaces sucha s theaters, restuarants, playgrounds, country clubs, stores and sports facilities.  Original sketches, photogrpahs, drawings and rare books are included in the material on display provided by the Enviornmental Design Archives, Visual Resources Center, and Environmental Design Library.

Exhibit dates: March 1 - May 20, 2016

The College of Environmental Design at U.C. Berkeley was the first in the U.S. to combine under one college the departments of architecture, landscape architecture and city planning, and to incorporate the concept of social and cultural factors into the curriculum of its architecture department. A product of the 1960s widespread protests of the “failure of the institution,” social factors in environmental design was a “response to a number of serious social problems as manifested in the physical design of our major institutions" (Lindheim, 1975).

The Social Factors program at Berkeley introduced social science methods to teach the design of buildings and environments more responsive to human needs. Previous curricula and teaching focused on the aesthetic and technical aspects of architecture and landscape architecture.

This exhibit explores the innovative approaches to design education that allowed students to translate socio-cultural values into physical forms. While highlighting the fertile years of the Social Factors program in the 1960s-1980s, the exhibit also conveys its long-term impact on scholars, designers, and students at (and beyond) Berkeley today.

Throughout history designers have created furniture pieces as stand–alone objects, to compliment a building or space, or as an important step in the evolution of a much bigger design idea or technology.

Furniture design serves as a way to test ideas at a smaller scale and experiment with different methods and materials. It also brings into focus fundamental design challenges such as how a person will interact with the design, and what the physical and emotional impacts will be.

Form Follows showcases furniture designs from collections in the Environmental Design Archives as well as designs from students who participated in the form follows chair design competition in Spring 2016.

Designing for a country not one’s own often results in projects that reflect the geo-political and economic factors at the time. Issues of diplomacy, colonialism, post-war reconstruction, new and old political allies, and resources such as rubber and petroleum and who manages them are only a few of the forces that compel the clients commissioning design projects. This exhibit features designs, landscapes, and planning projects on six continents by designers based in the San Francisco Bay Area and held by the Environmental Design Archives.

In some sense investigating “designing in foreign lands” is an exercise in following the money. Governments are the clients for embassies, developers contract commercial centers and resorts, businesses commission corporate facilities, and municipalities fund parks, schools, and master plans. International competitions also encourage designers to submit schemes for overseas projects. Other influential factors may be expertise in a particular building type such as Ernest Kump’s proficiency designing community colleges or clients requesting an architect or landscape architect from their home locale to design a project for them.

These projects, whether planning, landscape architecture, or architecture, both raise questions and provide insight.  Do they reflect cultural preferences? Do they engage local building materials and techniques?  Does plant selection reflect climate more accurately than building design, because it must?

Curator: Waverly Lowell
Exhibition Committee: Emily Vigor, Miguel Nieto, Esther MacKenzie, Chris Marino, Jason Miller