In 1953 William W. Wurster established the Environmental Design Archives to collect, house, and preserve architectural records for teaching and research. The first major donation was the Bernard Maybeck Collection. By 1973 the archives’ mission expanded to include landscape architecture collections. Since then, holdings have grown to include more than 100 collections, becoming Northern California’s foremost repository of historic architecture and landscape documents.

Primary records housed in the archives include drawings, plans, correspondence, reports, specifications, photographs, plant lists, subject files, and artifacts. The collections document residences, commercial buildings, parks, and public institutions and encompass a wide range of projects, periods, styles, and types.

Architecture holdings include works of the First Bay Area Tradition (1890–1917), such as those by John Galen Howard, Bernard Maybeck, Julia Morgan, and Willis Polk. The Second Bay Area Tradition (1928–1942) is also well documented, with works by William Wurster, Gardner Dailey, and William Merchant. Representing the Third Bay Area Tradition (1945–1970) and post-war modernism are the designs of Joseph Esherick and EHDD (Esherick, Homsey, Dodge & Davis), WBE (Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons), MLTW (Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull & Whitaker), Oakland & Imada, John Funk, Roger Lee, Ernest Born, Henry Hill, Vernon DeMars, and others.

The archives’ landscape design materials cover a broader geographic area. Collections from the early 20th century include the work of noted English landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll; that of Beatrix Jones Farrand, the only female founder of the American Society of Landscape Architects; and that of Southern California designers Paul Thiene and Lockwood deForest. Additionally, the archives houses the records of the founders and practitioners of modern California landscape design, such as Thomas Church, Garrett Eckbo, Douglas Baylis, Robert Royston, Geraldine Knight Scott, and Theodore Osmundson.

Other historic records found in the archives’ collection are those of UC Berkeley’s Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, which include faculty papers, course material, and student work; the work of architectural photographers such as Philip Fein; and the records of the American Institute of Architects’ San Francisco chapter and regional professional landscape architecture associations.