USC alumnus Emmet Wemple was an influential landscape architect based in Southern California. Wemple and his firm Emmet L. Wemple & Associates had participated in an impressive array of national and international projects, including those for civic master planning, academic institutions, commercial and retail facilities, hotels, convention centers, museums, libraries, residences, housing developments and recreational facilities. Spanning from the 1960s to 1995, the bulk of the collection consists of approximately 800 rolls of architectural drawings (with about 20 drawings in each roll) for some 2,000 projects.

Emmet Wemple (1921-1996) was a renowned Southern California landscape architect, who played a critical role in the development of what has become known as "California Style." He blended architecture and nature in an effort to create a seamless whole. Born in San Francisco, Wemple had spent most of his life in Southern California. He graduated from the USC School of Fine Arts in 1947 and earned his license from the Board of Landscape Architects in 1954. He immediately opened a practice and became President of Emmet L. Wemple & Associates (ELWA), a site planning and urban design firm with offices in Los Angeles and Costa Mesa. The staff consisted of registered architects and landscape architects, with a number of individuals holding advanced degrees in fine arts, horticulture, landscape architecture and architecture.

215.0 Cubic feet (43 drawers, three cabinets (marked drawers 10A-C) and one upright box housing architectural drawings; 81 boxes of project files, research and miscellaneous; and 29 binders of slides.)

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