About the Architecture and Design Collection (ADC)

UCSB professor David Gebhard (1927-1996) founded the ADC in 1963. Today it is one of the largest architectural archives in North America with more than 1,000,000 drawings, as well as papers, photographs, models, decorative objects, and furniture. The focus of the collection is design and architecture of southern California from the late 19^th through the late 20^th century.

Kem Weber, Airline chair, 1934		Paul László, Model for the László house, 1937

More than 300 collections and archives make up the ADC, a portrait of design in the region through the work of well-known and little remembered figures such as, Irving Gill, John Byers, Roland Coate, Sr., George Washington Smith, Myron Hunt and Harold Chambers, Robert Stacy-Judd, R. M. Schindler, Lutah Maria Riggs, Thornton Abell, Gregory Ain, Julius R. Davidson, Palmer Sabin, Kem Weber, Whitney Smith and Wayne Williams, Edward Killingsworth, Rex Lotery, Maynard Lyndon, and Barton Myers, among others.

The ADC receives generous support from the Getty Foundation, the Council on Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR), as well as the Museum's Architecture and Design Council.

R. M. Schindler, Kings Road house elevations, section, and perspective (Los Angeles, Calif.) 1921

Search the Architecture and Design Collection

As archives are processed, finding guides describing the nature and contents of each collection are posted on the web site of the Online Archive of California. This database of archival collections from all over the state of California allows researchers to search in one place across multiple institutions for materials relevant to their topic. Learn more about the Online Archive of California.

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