LibGuides: Architectural Technology: Outside Resources

NOTE: Some of these might be commercial sites that offer free resources.

AASL Open-Access Architectural Content
List of open-access institutional repositories in North America with architectural content.
American Architects and Buildings
National database of buildings and architects, both historic and modern.
ArchDaily
Search for the latest architectural news: projects, products, events, interviews and competitions.
Archiplanet
Blog featuring "the world's amazing architecture."
Architectural Record
Architecture news, modern architecture, design architecture and green architecture information for all building types.
Architypes
Online library of architectural design issues, solutions and ideas.
Building Green
Mission is to facilitate transformation of the North American building industry into a force for local, regional and global environmental protection; for preservation and restoration of the natural environment; and for creation of healthy indoor environments—while promoting the well-being of the company and its employees, owners, and associates.
Building Technology Heritage Library
Collection of American and Canadian pre-1964 architectural trade catalogs, house plan books, and technical building guides.
E-Architect
Features a range of building types from houses to skyscrapers, plus major landscape and interior projects. Buildings can be searched by country, city, by type, or by architect.
The Engineering ToolBox
Tools and basic information for design, engineering and construction of technical applications.
Essential Architecture
Pictorial links to famous architectural styles worldwide.
Getty Publications Virtual Library
E-books free to read or download. Subjects include architecture.
Great Buildings and Structures
Documents a thousand buildings and hundreds of leading architects, selected over ten years by the editors of Architecture Week, with photographic images and architectural drawings, integrated maps and timelines, 3D building models, commentaries, bibliographies, web links, and more, for famous designers and structures of all kinds.
Healthy Housing Reference Manual
Guidance from the Department of Housing & Urban Development.
The International Archive of Women in Architecture
From Virginia Tech, this site documents the history of women's contributions to the built environment by collecting, preserving, storing, and making available to researchers the professional papers of women architects, landscape architects, designers, architectural historians and critics, and urban planners, and the records of women's architectural organizations.
Looking at Buildings
An introduction to architecture with pages on building types, architectural styles and traditions and building materials and methods of construction, and an expanding guide and introduction to buildings in seven of England's cities.
MatWeb
Searchable database of material properties; includes data sheets of thermoplastic and thermoset polymers such as ABS, nylon, polycarbonate, polyester, polyethylene and polypropylene; metals such as aluminum, cobalt, copper, lead, magnesium, nickel, steel, superalloys, titanium and zinc alloys; ceramics; plus semiconductors, fibers, and other engineering materials.
Old Houses
Overview of the style, features, example homes and links for Colonial, Early National & Romantic, Victorian, Modern, Bungalow, and Arts & Crafts styles.
Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
Provides authoritative information on three centuries of Philadelphia buildings and designers, incorporating data and images from the collections of more than 25 Philadelphia-area repositories.
Structurae: International Database and Gallery of Structures
Discover the diversity of civil, structural and bridge engineering―more than 75,000 structures with over 14,500 participating companies and their products as well as 10,000 engineers and architects, all of that illustrated with 290,000 images.
Thomas Register of American Manufacturers
Industrial buying and specifying guide; offers access to an enormous database of industrial information; free registration.
US Modernist Architecture Magazine Library
The world's largest open digital collection of major 20^th-century architecture magazines, with over 3.2 million downloadable pages―all free to access.
World Architecture News
Global resource for architecture and architects.

Calculators

CalculatorEdge
Dozens of special calculators for solving complex equations and formulas in fields including: electrical, mechanical, chemical, electronics, civil, metallurgy, plastics, physics, and math.
Desmos Graphing Calculator
Free graphing calculator that can be used both as a web application and mobile application.
Mathematics Statistics and Analysis Calculators
Free calculators that can be used on a variety of browsers as well as mobile and tablet devices.
MegaConverter2
Calculator that handles conversions (fractions to decimals, Fahrenheit to Celsius, Roman numerals to Arabic numerals, etc.)
Texas Instrument Graphing Calculator - TI-83 (Advanced Tutorial)
This tutorial by Russ Baker from Howard Community College (Maryland) gives more functions of the TI-83.

General

Creative Commons
Not-for-profit organization that helps develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure to maximize digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
Google Scholar
Restricts web searches to scholarly literature.
Hathi Trust Digital Library
Public-domain books/articles from libraries around the world.
Internet Archive
Books, movies, and musical performances plus the famous Wayback Machine.
National Science Digital Library
Resources for teaching and learning, with emphasis on the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
NIOSH Hearing Loss Simulator
Training and communication tool for promoting hearing loss prevention. It allows a user or trainer to demonstrate the effects of noise exposure on hearing without experiencing an actual noise-induced hearing loss.
NY Public Library Digital Collections
Books, prints, photographs, and historic magazines.
Open Library
Provides digital copies of public domain books.
Project Gutenberg
Free e-books for which U.S. copyright has expired.
U.S. Government Manual
Programs/activities within the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
Wikipedia
Crowd-sourced encyclopedia.

Dictionaries / Encyclopedias

Illustrated Architecture Dictionary
A free resource created by the city of Buffalo, NY.
Glossary of Architecture
From Wikipedia.
SAH Archipedia
A free online encyclopedia of U.S. buildings organized by the Society of Architectural Historians and the University of Virginia Press.
Visual Dictionary Online: Arts and Architecture
Combines definitions with exceptional illustrations.
WikiArquitectura
The largest free online architecture encyclopedia.

Digital Collections at the Library of Congress

Architecture, Design & Engineering Drawings
40,000 drawings (described in more than 3,900 catalog records), spanning 1600 to 1989, with most dating between 1880 and 1940. The designs are primarily for sites and structures in the U.S. (especially Washington, D.C.), as well as Europe and Mexico. American architects and architectural firms created most of the images. Building types range from the United States Capitol and the Library of Congress to private residences and hamburger restaurants.
Brumfield Collection
The 1,100 photographs document the architectural heritage of pre-Soviet Russia, highlighting wooden buildings, and religious, commercial and industrial facilities, as well as some landscapes.
Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South
More than 7,100 images showing an estimated 1,700 structures and sites in rural and urban areas of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, and to a lesser extent Florida, Mississippi, and West Virginia.
Frederick Law Olmsted Papers
The papers of farmer, writer, reformer, landscape architect, urban and suburban planner, and conservationist Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) consist of approximately 24,000 items (roughly 47,300 images), most of which were digitized from 60 reels of previously produced microfilm. The collection, spanning from 1777 to 1952, with the bulk dating 1838-1903, contains materials on both Olmsted's private and professional life.
Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive
Photographs of landmark buildings and architectural renovation projects in Washington, D.C., and throughout the United States. The first 23 groups of photographs contain more than 2,500 images and date from 1980 to 2005, with many views in color as well as black-and-white.
Historic American Buildings Survey
Documents achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types, engineering technologies, and landscapes, including examples as diverse as the Pueblo of Acoma, houses, windmills, one-room schools, the Golden Gate Bridge, and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Horydczak Collection
Documents the architecture and social life of the Washington metropolitan area in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, including exteriors and interiors of commercial, residential, and government buildings, as well as street scenes and views of neighborhoods.
Korab Collection
Almost 800 photographs by Balthazar Korab documenting 19 projects designed by renowned architect Eero Saarinen (1910-1961). Included are corporate headquarters, airports, university facilities, embassies, private residences, churches, a museum, and a monumental arch.