Drawings + Documents Archive: The Movie!

Learn about the Drawings + Documents Archive by watching our new, LEGO stop-motion movie on YouTube! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8wSirnkAYo) Follow Sarah, a student at the College of Architecture and Planning, as she navigates primary source researching at the archive and learns about all of the resources available to her--from original architectural drawings to 3-D prints.

Archives staff is incredibly grateful for the talents of its graduate assistants, particularly Raluca Filimon who directed the project, and for the enthusiasm of our narrator, Paul Jones, who stopped in one morning to remind us to buy donuts in the atrium and became an integral part of the project. 

Michael Graves, 1934-2015

Michael Graves, who died yesterday at the age of 80, was born in Indianapolis and left to study architecture at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard University. He taught architecture at Princeton University for 40 years and is known as one of the most prominent architects of the latter 20th century.

 He returned to Indiana numerous times to design buildings such as the Indianapolis Art Center (1996) in Broad Ripple and the NCAA Hall of Champions (1997) in Indianapolis. Graves visited Ball State University's relatively young College of Architecture and Planning in 1974 to give a lecture titled "A Little of the Old In and Out," a recording of which resides in the Drawings + Documents Archive. In the lecture, available on the University Libraries' Digital Media Repository, Graves gives a fascinating discussion of his projects, concepts of how to look at space, and extensively discusses the paintings of Matisse, Picasso, and Cezanne in relation to his own work. He also discusses the work of other architects, such as Le Corbusier.

Happy Architectural Holidays from the College of Architecture and Planning

 

 

In this 1967 photograph from the College of Architecture and Planning's open house, an undergraduate student is showing his noel-themed design board to his mother. The word noel features prominently in all of the personal holiday cards that can be found in Dean Charles Sappenfield's own collection in the archives, so it's likely this design project was directed by Dean Sappenfield.

 

Image: Open house, 1967. College of Architecture and Planning Images Collection, Drawings + Documents Archive, Ball State University.

Architectural Holidays

Every December, we post some of our favorite things in the archives--holiday cards designed by architects from our collections. This year we start with one that is truly meaningful for all of us here at the College of Architecture and Planning. It's one of a series of Noel cards designed by the first dean of the college, Charlie Sappenfield, who sadly passed away earlier this year. The card is undated, but was likely sent during the holidays in the late 1960s. A true Modernist, Sappenfield's design for the card displays a restrained color palette with a graphic that is both strong and playful.

Image: Noel holiday card, undated. Charles M. Sappenfield Architectural Records, Drawings + Documents Archive, Ball State University.

Balthazar Korab, 1926-2013

Balthazar Korab, the extraordinary architecture photographer, died this week, and we honor his memory by sharing his visit to Ball State University's College of Architecture and Planning in 1973.

After a cold January day spent photographing a building in Lebanon, Indiana, Korab visited the College of Architecture and Planning to give a lecture at the College's Monday night Guest Lecture Series. This is the recording of that lecture, titled "The Architect Photographer," which is available in the University Libraries' Digital Media Repository.

Mid-Century Architectural Holidays

Charles Sappenfield, known to just about everyone at the College of Architecture and Planning as Charlie, was an established architect in North Carolina when he was selected to come to Muncie, Indiana, to become the founding dean of the new school of architecture at Ball State University. That was 1965. He brought with him his distinctly Modernist design aesthetic honed through extensive international travel and his own successful practice, and infused the new architecture school with broad ideas about good design. He remained dean until 1981, when he directed DESIGN INDIANA, a statewide office to improve the quality of design in the state.

This Noel card likely dates from the late 1950s to early 1960s due to the Asheville, North Carolina, return address on the verso and since the signature doesn't include his wife, whom he married in 1963. The bi-fold printed card was designed to be folded down the center, sealed with a round sticker along the long edge, and addressed on the verso to allow it to be sent without requiring an envelope. It's a clever format he repeated for other holiday cards.

Image: Noel Holiday Card, ca. 1958. (45-23) Charles M. Sappenfield Architectural Records, Drawings + Documents Archive, Archives and Special Collections, Ball State University Libraries.

Archives and Architecture Library Receive AIA Award

The Drawings + Documents Archive and the Architecture Library were honored to receive the 2012 Walter S. Blackburn Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Indiana Chapter at the AIA Indiana and Kentucky Convention held in Lexington, Kentucky, last week. Named after Walter S. Blackburn, FAIA, an African American architect who led the AIA Diversity Taskforce and served the Indiana arts and architecture communities, this award is given annually to a non-architect person or organization that has contributed time and service in support of the architectural profession.

It's a good time of the year to be thankful, and we're incredibly thankful for the support and recognition by the faculty, students, alumni, and the administration at Ball State University. We're especially thankful to Professor Emeritus Tony Costello, FAIA, for nominating the Archives and Library, and wish him congratulations on receiving the prestigious Gold Award for his role in educating and mentoring architecture students and helping give Indiana architects national visibility.

Image: 2012 AIA Indiana and Kentucky convention, from left to right, Josh Coggeshall, Bruce Race, FAIA, Tony Costello, FAIA, (Gold Award winner), Carol Street (Blackburn Award winner), and Amy Trendler (Blackburn Award winner). Photo courtesy of Vera Adams.

The beginning of the Ball State University College of Architecture & Planning

Until the College of Architecture and Planning was established at Ball State University in 1965, Indiana students who wanted to become architects had to leave the state because none of the state schools offered an architecture program. The board of directors of the Indiana Society of Architects keenly felt this lack of educational opportunity affected their profession negatively and began planning to discuss the matter at the State Legislature in January 1961.

This article dates from October 9, 1960, shows the Indiana Society of Architects meeting at the Tavern Hotel in New Albany, Indiana, to plan their proposal. The agenda reads:

1. Establishment of a school of architecture in Indiana.
2. Revision of architect registration laws in Indiana.

Architects in attendance include Fran Schroeder, Wayne Weber, Alfred Porteous, Walter Scholer, Jr., Jim Walker, Harry Hunter, Ralph Knapp, R. J. Schultz, and Don Gibson. Fran Schroeder, from whose collection this article can be found, is shown seated, the third person from the left.

CAP Guest Lecture Series Recordings Online

The first 50 audio recordings in the College of Architecture and Planning Guest Lecture Series Recordings are now availble for research and discovery in the Ball State University Libraries’ Digital Media Repository. Listen to some of the very first speakers who came to our fledgling design school from 1966-73. You’ll see names you will likely recognize, such as Louis I. Kahn, Nathaniel Owings, Romaldo Giurgola, among other regional figures such as Ewing Miller and Evans Woollen. We are continuing to digitize the remainder of the collection and will send notices as those lectures are online. You can find all of the first installment at http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm4/collection.php?CISOROOT=/CAPLectures

Alphabetical list of guest lectures in the first installment of the collection:

Jeffrey Ellis Aronin

"Climate in architecture." January 8, 1968.

Edmund Bacon
"Planning, architecture, and politics." January 10, 1972.

Jacques Blumer
"Atelier 5." April 24, 1967.

Elliott Brenner
"Experimental architecture." April 24, 1967.

Samuel Brody
"Urban housing." January 15, 1973.

Grady Clay
"Staying ahead of the urban crowd." November 13, 1967.

Charles Counts
"American crafts." March 11, 1968.

George Danforth
"The work of Mies van Der Rohe." February 12, 1968.

Jeanne Davern
"The future of architecture." October 16, 1967.

Arthur Erickson
"The work of his firm." September 18, 1972.

Tom Everman
"Project and office management." SOM Lecture Series, September 17, 1973.

Albert Fein
"Frederick Law Olmstead and tradition." October 9, 1972.

Paul Friedberg
"Dynamics of open space." September 20, 1971.

William J. Geddis
"Recent work of TAC [The Architects' Collaborative, Inc.]." January 8, 1973.

Romaldo Giurgola
"Romaldo Giurgola: his private architectural practice." November 11, 1968.

Whitney Gordon
"International slums." October 3, 1966.
"Architecture in Middletown." January 15, 1968.

King Graf
"Campus planning." October 17, 1966.

A. J. H. M. Haak
"Dutch architecture." September 19, 1966.

George Hall
"Planning the Calumet River basin." October 2, 1967.

Edward T. Hall
"Proxemics--man's use of space." October 23, 1972.

John Hannaford
"A plan for Muncie and Anderson." February 13, 1967.

Harwell Harris
"Designing architecture in California and Texas." December 18, 1967.
"Greene and Greene architects." December 19, 1967.
"Louis Sullivan." December 19, 1967.

Charles Harris
"Organization and management of design firms." October 2, 1972.

Richard Howard
"Architectural graphics." September 25, 1967.

William Johnson
"Landscape architecture and the environment." January 13, 1969.

Louis I. Kahn
"Architecture." April 14, 1971.

Fazlur Khan
"Long span structures." SOM Lecture Series, September 24, 1973.
"The SOM office process: engineering and the computer." SOM Lecture Series, September 25, 1973.

Balthazar Korab
"The architect photographer." January 22, 1973.

Leslie Laskey
"Design education now." October 23, 1967.

Victor A. Lundy
"On architecture." October 30, 1972.

H. Roll McLaughlin
"Future for the past." January 22, 1968.

David Meeker
"James Associates, Inc.." October 9, 1967.

Ewing Miller and L. Wheeler
"Behavioral research for architectural planning." December 11, 1967.

Samuel V. Noe
"Strategic urban design." November 14, 1966.

Franz Oswald
"Le Corbusier's Carpenter Center, Harvard University." October 30, 1967.

Nathaniel Owings
"The spaces in between." SOM Lecture Series, September 10, 1973.

J. Norman Pease
"Charlotte/Mecklenburg Governmental Center." November 6, 1967.

Robert A. Peterson
"Brazilia." March 27, 1967.

Robert Propst
"Furniture exhibition opening." April 3, 1967.

Mildred Schmertz
"Russian architecture." 1973.

Jerome Sincoff
"National Air and Space Museum." September 25, 1972.

George M. Stephens Jr.
"Urban and regional planning." February 6, 1967.

Evans Woollen III
"Radiant city revisited." May 15, 1967.

Thomas K. Zung
"Concepts of architecture in the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico." December 4, 1967.


Images: Harry Weese with students, Jeanne Davern, and Duncan Stewart. CAP Images Collection, Drawings + Documents Archive, Archives and Special Collections, Ball State University Libraries.

Around the College of Architecture and Planning

Anyone on campus who walks by the College of Architecture and Planning building along McKinley Avenue will likely recognize the metal CAP sign tucked in amongst the landscaping. It's located on the west side of the building, which served as the main entrance before the 1980 addition moved its main entrance to the south side.

It was built in a "Hands-on Steel" class from 1975. We recently uncovered photographs in our CAP Images Collection that were taken during its fabrication. The picture above is how it looks today, February 28, 2012, at 37 years old, and below is how it looked with its first layer of paint back in 1975--yellow!