For 60 years, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design (AUD) has contributed to shaping the built environment in Los Angeles and beyond by educating designers, hosting influential thinkers, and documenting architectural development. To mark this anniversary, the department is launching an exhibition called “Core Samples,” which will display archival materials that have not been publicly shown before.
Running from March 12 through June 30, “Core Samples” presents a variety of items from AUD’s archives. These include VHS tapes, faculty portraits, 35mm slides of student work, travel photographs, office drawings, and posters. The exhibition aims to show how design has been recorded and preserved over six decades.
Faculty members Samaa Elimam and Michael Osman organized the exhibition. They hope to encourage reflection on what institutions choose to preserve and how these decisions shape collective memory. “We have been interested in the different methods used by educators at UCLA to document and record their pedagogies. Each generation used tools at their disposal — some new, some old — and the students’ work often reflected the technical capacity and limits of storage,” said Osman. “That’s why it’s so exciting to have the archive move into a classroom for the rest of the academic year to help orient us in the present while looking at the past and projecting into the future.”
The exhibition is set up in Perloff Hall 1118—a space usually reserved for seminars—and uses archival equipment such as bookcases, flat files, bankers boxes, and folders. This arrangement allows visitors direct access to materials that were previously stored away. Notable items include posters from a late-1980s lecture series featuring architect Frank Gehry and historian John Julius Norwich.
“We envision ‘Core Samples’ as a hands-on teaching collection that encourages collaboration and dialogue around our shared history, one that also happens to be a remarkable record of design in L.A. over the past 60 years,” said Elimam. “We’re inviting visitors to join us in rediscovering materials that tell us how people learned and taught in Perloff Hall, much like a family album. Our hope is that over the months it’s installed, visitors will contribute to the exhibition and it becomes something we’ve all worked on together.”
Visitors are encouraged to interact with materials by watching recorded lectures or examining large-format drawings and slides. This approach allows them to gain insight into daily life at AUD across different eras.
“Core Samples” is part of AUD’s broader 60th anniversary programming running through June 26 with public events celebrating students’, faculty’s, and collaborators’ contributions—all held at Perloff Hall.
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The exhibition opens March 12 with a reception from 6–8 p.m., located at Perloff Hall 1118 on UCLA’s campus.
