Environmental Design Archives Collections
The Environmental Design Archives holds more than 200 collections documenting the built and landscaped environment. These records span more than a century, 1890–2021, and contain primary source materials, such as correspondence, reports, specifications, drawings, photographs, models, and artifacts. Though the archives’ primary focus is the San Francisco Bay Area, the collections also represent designers and projects from throughout California, the United States, and the world.
List of Collections
Information pages about individual architects and firms, landscape architects, designers, and architectural photographers can be found by following the links listed below. Names without links are collections held by the archives that are not yet available to the public.
Links to finding aids that describe the arrangement, scope, and contents of the records can be found on the collection information pages. These finding aids can also be accessed directly through the Online Archive of California.
Most of our collections have been arranged according to the “Standard Series for Architecture and Landscape Records: A Tool for the Arrangement and Description of Archival Collections,” written by Kelcy Shepherd and Waverly Lowell.
Project files, which make up the bulk of our collections, are arranged by the creator and original client or project name. The project files are not indexed by address. If you do not know the original client or project name, try the San Francisco Public Library’s collection of city directories to match an address to a resident, or contact your local planning department. For example, if you live in the City of Berkeley, you can research permit histories through the Permit Service Center.
Information pages: webpages for each collection containing a brief biography of the creator of the records, and for each collection–the scope of contents, links to the project index, and an online finding aid.
Finding Aids: individual collections available to aid researchers in understanding the arrangement, scope, and contents of the records. They can also be accessed through the Online Archive of California where digital images are also available (see eyeball icon).
Project Index: an excel spreadsheet that lists all the projects for a particular EDA collection. This index is organized by the original client’s last name or project title and can be found on the information page for each respective collection.