Subject & Course Guides: Architecture Resources: Researching Architects and Firms

Books & Articles

One of the best ways to find information on individual architects or firms is to look in the Library Catalog using the name as a subject or keyword. For prominent architects and firms, there may be several books detailing the projects over several years or there may be books on one specific building.

Here are some recent examples in the collection:

Steven Holl: Scale: An Architect's Sketchbook by Lars Muller (Editor)
Call Number: NA737.H56 A4 2012
Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2012. 400 watercolors represent the creative process of this famous and influential American architect.
Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects by Edited by Jeanne Gang & Zoë Ryan
Call Number: NA737.S742 B85 2012
Chicago: Studio Gang Architects in association with the Art Institute of Chicago, c2012. Examines the firm's most current work.
Zaha Hadid Architects: Heydar Aliyev Center by Zaha Hadid
Call Number: folio NA1469.H33 A4 2014
Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, c2014. Documents the design of the Azerbaijan building that won the 2014 Design of the Year Award.

Firms & Individuals

ArchInform database includes information over more than 55000 built and unrealized projects (mostly 20th century) from various architects and planners; search by architect, town or keyword; information provided includes name, address, keywords and bibliography, may also include images, comments, links to other Websites or internal links.

Architect Finder, From the American Institute of Architects (AIA), this is a searchable database for finding member firms.

Architects USA, Directory of over 20,000 architectural firms in the United States. Information comes from the architects or from Yellow Pages.

US Architecture Firms, Part of the Almanac of Architecture & Design published by Design Intelligence, searchable database to entries that include name of firm, ranking, address, website link, principles, revenues, types of services, and more.

Contemporary Architects - Edited by Muriel Emanuel

Call Number: folio NA680 .C625 1994

New York: St. James Press, c1994. 3rd ed. Biographical information on 575 20th-century architects, landscape architects, and structural engineers, along with lists of their buildings, critical opinion, bibliography, and an image of one work.

Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects - Adolf K. Placzek

Call Number: NA40 .M25 1982

4v. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, c1982. Biographical reference for 2,450 architects, planners, engineers, designers, landscape architects, and firms. Discussions of architects and their works; lists works with dates and locations. Coverage from ancient Egypt to persons born before 1931 or already deceased.

Lives and Works of Early Kansas Architects - J. Kurt Von Achen

Call Number: NA730.K2 V66 1966a

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Kansas, Architecture, 1966. Individual chapters on 3 architects with appendices that include biographical sketches of architects and builders in Kansas, an annotated list of buildings by county, and additional information on J.G. Haskell.

Interviews

Talking Architecture: Interviews with Architects by Hanno Ratuerberg
Munich; New York: Prestel, c2008. Interviews with 20 of the world's most influential living architects in which they discuss their accomplishments, challenges, inspriations, and dreams.
Oral History of Modern Architecture: Interviews with the Greatest Architects of the Twentieth Century by John Peter
New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994. Book + 72 minute audio CD. Featuring conversations with some 70 architects, taped mostly between 1953 and 1966.

Conversations with Students. A series of books with 11 volumes issued between 2010-12 by Princeton Architectural Press. KU owns all the volumes, usually in both a paper and an e-book format. To find them, search the Library Catalog using "conversations with students" as a phrase.