Browse Exhibits (7 total)
Environmental Design/A New Modernism
50th Anniversary of the College of Environmental Design, 1959-2009
The College of Environmental Design (CED) was conceived of in the 1950s and formally established in 1959. To differentiate their ideas from Modernist dogma, the founders William Wurster, Catherine Bauer Wurster, Jack Kent, and their Bay Area colleagues dubbed their vision “Environmental Design,” or what we might call a “New Modernism.” The CED was unique not only because it was one of the earliest colleges to combine architecture, city planning, landscape architecture, and the decorative arts, but also because it emphasized the important role of the social, natural, and physical sciences in informing teaching, practice, and research. Wurster Hall, completed in 1964, has become the emblem of the founders’ vision where, in 2009, it continues to emerge anew.
The exhibit focuses on seminal moments from 1959 to 2009 in the evolution of the CED founders' vision, whereby teaching, research, and practice were informed by the social and natural sciences and which, in recent decades, has significantly come to include the computer sciences. It features images of drawings, photographs, and documents drawn from the Environmental Design Archives, the Environmental Design Library, the Bancroft Library, the University Archives, IURD and CEDR, and private collections.
All Their Own
Designing for Themselves and Each Other
Although a designer’s first projects are often for family members, they inevitably will design a place of their own during the course of their career. These include gardens, residences, vacation homes, remodels, and design-build projects. Designers also design for each other. This exhibition showcases projects by architects and landscape architects for themselves and for their colleagues.
Planning with Nature
Founded in 1913, the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning celebrated its centennial in 2013! This exhibition examines the history and guiding principles o the department - innovation, social responsibility, and research through the works of tis students, faculty, staff and alumni. Historical, archival, and cutting edge material from the Environmetal design Archives, Visual Resources Center, and Environmental Design Library were used for this exhibit.
Designing People
The figures that inhabit architectural and landscape renderings are not the actual focus of the drawings. Homeowners, children, pets, shoppers, and condo-dwellers are included to convey the scale and functionality of a proposed design. They humanize and create an emotional appeal in what might otherwise appear to be sterile environments and allow the client to imagine how a space will be used. From the watercolor Victorian to the scalie hipster, this exhibit features more than a century of designers’ representations of people from the Environmental Design Archives.
SIX degrees
With more than 200 collections documenting the work of most of the San Francisco Bay Region’s historically significant architects and landscape architects, the holdings of the Environmental Design Archives are incredibly interconnected. Many of these connections stem from key figures or firms whose practice involved mentoring or collaborating with other regional architects and landscape architects.
This exhibition applies the theory of six degrees of separation to the designers whose collections are held by the Environmental Design Archives. Spanning 118 years, from the 1898 International Competition for the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California to the present, SIX degrees showcases projects resulting from both personal and professional relationships.
Designs from a Distance
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
Design and Diversity
This exhibit of original materials from the Environmental Design Archives showcases a nexus of design and diversity in a number of ways. One section reveals the diversity within CED’s history through photographs of students with their classmates, student publications and campus surveys; and examples of their work. One section addresses gender and power and investigates projects that women designers created for powerful men, organizations, and corporations. The largest section is intended to serve as inspiration by providing examples of significant work created by a diverse group of regional designers.
Curators: Chris Marino, Sabine Sträuli, Waverly Lowell
Exhibit Committee: Nicole Santiago, Emily Vigor, Jason Miller, Andrew Manuel
This exhibit has been funded by the ARCUS Endowment through the Diversity Platforms Committee of the College of Environmental Design