Since its founding in 1894, Van Alen Institute has produced more than 2,400 design competitions that have engaged an international community of architects, student designers, educators, and civic leaders. For a detailed overview of Van Alen's historic competition programs, and the Institute's origins as an organization devoted to architectural education, please click here. You can learn more about Van Alen's current programs here. Since 2007, the Institute has embarked on an ambitious effort to catalog this archival resource and make it accessible to the public. Our beta online platform previews just a small portion of the archive’s treasures that have been digitized to date. We look forward to sharing our ongoing work with you, and to exploring this vital legacy of projects in public architecture.

The Design Archive is made possible with generous support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Stephen A. & Diana L. Goldberg Foundation; and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Advisory Council: Marvin Anderson (University of Washington), Byron Bell (Bell Donnelly Architects & Planners), Ray Gastil (Gastilworks Planning & Design), Leonora Gidlund (New York City Municipal Archives), Christopher Gray (Office for Metropolitan History), Ray Lifchez (U.C. Berkeley), Janet Parks (Columbia University), and Anthony Vidler (The Cooper Union).

Project Team: Adi Shamir, Chris Dierks, and Chialin Chou. Online Platform: Seth Kaufman and CollectiveAccess. Photography: Zechariah Vincent.

Special thanks to: Cesare Birignani, Jordan Bischoff, Cindy Chu, Leigh Davis, Simone Goldstein, Jamie Hand, Arunee Kasemphaibulsuk, Jae Kim Printers, Brenna Lee, Chelsea Limbird, Leah Loscutoff, Roger Mainor, Alexandra Markiewicz, Rebekah Meeks, Marlene Mendez, Julia Mon Cureno, Josué Morales-Urbina, Edina Nathania, Amy Obonaga, Arden Ohls, Aaron Orenstein, Anne Trumble, Joshua Van Donge, and Haley Wiley.

Terms of Use: All materials on Van Alen Institute’s Design Archive website are protected by copyright laws and may be covered by other restrictions as well.

Images acquired via VAI’s Design Archive website are for non-commercial private or educational use only. No image published on the Design Archive website may be reproduced in any form or by any means, whether print or digital, without the prior written consent of Van Alen Institute for commercial use, publication, or any purpose other than fair use as defined by law. Unauthorized publication or redistribution of VAI’s Design Archive files is strictly prohibited and any infringement risks prosecution to the full extent of the law.

Inquiries should be addressed to archive@vanalen.org.