About the Arch170 site

College of Environmental Design
Department of Architecture, UC Berkeley
Architecture Slide Library

ABOUT THIS SITE:

This site, launched in Fall 1995, is one of the first of its kind to complement an architecture history course. The site and image links to SPIRO (Slide and Photograph Image Retrieval Online database) are intended as a supplement to Architecture 170: A Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism. This class is offered at the Department of Architecture in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. Architecture 170A and 170B are the two semesters of architectural history survey which are required of Berkeley 4-year B.A. Architecture students, and which are also offered to the general student population. The class meets three days per week: Two lectures days with slides, and one discussion section lead by graduate student instructors.

Lectures will generally appear "online" within two weeks of the original lecture date, and will have direct links to the images in the SPIRO database.

In 1995 architecture student Casto Vocal created the first Arch 170 Home Page. At last account Casto was working in the computer software industry. In Fall 1996 through June of 1997 the website was revamped, authored and maintained by Peter Montgomery. Returning to school to study architecture, Peter had worked for several years in the Bay Area multimedia graphics and entertainment industry.Jane Lin continued the page, until Fall 2000 when automatic html software was created by the Museum Informatics Project.

Thanks are due to Maryly Snow, the Architecture Department Slide Librarian for her patience and support. In many ways these history web pages are a result of more than a decade of Maryly Snow's work with creating a digital image database. Thanks for teaching history with such a critical flare goes to the course instructor, Professor Dell Upton. Also many thanks to Steven Brooks (imaging expert) and Claire Dannenbaum of the Slide Library, for technical guidance and good natured support. Lastly, thanks to Randy Ballew of the Museum Informatics Project for all of his cooperation and assistance in connecting us to 30 gig of images via SPIRO.

Tips to better understanding and navigating the site:
Formatting:
Within the lecture notes themselves links to images are often listed between brackets, for example: [Banqueting Hall: Elevation; Exterior; Interior, ceiling; Ceiling, detail; View, 1660]. These lists are ordered using the following guidelines as a form of syntax: [Name of monument or location: Site maps; Site details; Plans; Sections; Elevations; Aerial views; Exteriors; Exterior drawings; Interiors, Interior drawings; Detail photos; Detail drawings] Note the difference of the colon and semicolon, and the two spaces between each link and after the name of the monument.

The primary links:
The main Architecture 170 page contains links to the most recent two semester's pages. Thus if it is currently April the main page would link to the current Spring and past Fall's pages; while if it were October, the main page would link to the past Spring's pages and the current Fall pages.

Let your voice be heard:
Their has been no formal institutional support for this site within the architecture department. That is, there is no budget or staffing for the site at the department level. The site has existed only because of ad hoc volunteer efforts. There will continue to be very little money or strategic resources for image based electronic educational resource unless the students and users of SPIRO and the Architecture 170 site make enough noise. User need to let it be known to the administration that they love, and depend on, computer online resources. Until then, the brunt of organizing the web efforts sits on the shoulder of the Slide Library whose budget already consumed by serving needs via it's physical slide collection. At some future date, inertia, and a better understanding of the amazing power of images connected to a multi-field database, will bring the digital pictures of SPIRO to the forefront of Berkeley's educational and research efforts. If you enjoy this site tell the Slide Library and the College of Environmental Design Dean's Office. The future of the design professions is in recalling and applying knowledge - SPIRO and the Architecture 170 pages are ideal examples of tools aimed at this proposition.

Other image and architecture sites of interest:
American Architecture syllabus, University of Washington
Architecture, West Virginia.
Architecture, Reilly, West Virginia
Architecture, Renaissance and Baroque, West Virginia.
Art History, University of Washington
Electronic Image Library at Berkeley
Fine Arts, 267
Japanese Paintings.

By the way:
All images stored and accessed via SPIRO are protected by the 1976 Copyright Act. Downloading, copying, printing, or altering the images is a violation of digital permission agreements that permit electronic display as well as the 1976 Copyright Act.

Department of Architecture
University of California, Berkeley
Send comments, question, and list of needed fixes relating to this site to:
Architecture Slide Librarian

originally created by:
Peter Montgomery