Collection context
Summary
- Title:
- Claude Stoller Collection
- Dates:
- bulk 1957-1996
- Creators:
- Stoller, Claude
- Extent:
- 6 Linear Feet: 6 cartons
- Language:
- English .
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of Item], Claude Stoller Papers, Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The Claude Stoller Papers are comprised of two boxes of material that primarily represent his career as a Faculty member at UC Berkeley. The bulk of the collection consists of course materials and student work from 1957-1991. Also included in the collection are reference materials, many of which focus on issues surrounding architecture's social role and teaching architecture. One of these reference materials utilizes 3-D glasses to explain engineering graphics. There are some faculty administrative files, and professional papers relating to Stoller's professional projects.
The faculty papers document Stoller's long career as a UC Berkeley professor, and consists of student work from a variety of Architecture and Environmental Design courses, lecture plans and notes, reference materials for teaching, ideas for course development, and administrative papers. These files also include drawings and photographs.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Claude Stoller (1921 - 2023) was born in the Bronx, New York. He enrolled at City College of New York for a semester while searching for a school with a strong visual arts curriculum. Although he had heard of Black Mountain College from his brother Ezra, an architectural photographer, it was at the 1938 Bauhaus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that Black Mountain caught his attention. He applied to Black Mountain and Cooper Union in New York and was accepted at both. A dinner interview by Xanti Schawinsky, a former Bauhaus student who had taught at Black Mountain was the deciding factor. At Black Mountain, Stoller focused on art and architecture and explored his interest in photography.. He took Josef Albers's basic courses in design, color and drawing and architectural courses with Lawrence Kocher, Howard Dearstyne, and Lou Bernard Voight. He left Black Mountain after the 1942 fall quarter when he was drafted into the United States Army. During World War II he attended army engineering school after which he was sent overseas with the 13th Armored Division in France and Germany. In February 1946, Stoller entered Harvard Graduate School of Design where he was accepted with advanced standing despite the fact he had not graduated from Black Mountain. After graduating with an M. Arch in 1949, Stoller studied for a year at the University of Florence in Italy. He and his then wife Nan Oldenburg Stoller (now Nan Black), a Black Mountain student and a graduate of Radcliffe, were joined by Lucian and Jane Slater Marquis, both Black Mountain students. On his return Stoller worked for architectural firms in the Boston area. In 1955 he moved his family to St. Louis, Missouri, where he taught at Washington University. After two years the Stollers moved to the San Francisco area. In 1956, he formed the partnership, Marquis & Stoller Architects, with another young architect, Robert B. Marquis, the brother of Lucian Marquis. The firm, with its office on Beach Street, focused on the general practice of architecture and planning including residential, housing, institutional, and governmental projects. In 1978, Stoller formed Stoller/Partners (later Stoller Knoerr Architects) in Berkeley. Projects included single homes, multiple dwellings, religious buildings, and institutional and commercial structures. Social issues such as housing and energy-efficient designs and historic preservation were a primary concern for Stoller. In 1957 William Wurster invited Stoller to join the faculty in the Department of Architecture at the University of California. He was acting chairman in 1965-66 and Chair of Graduate Studies from the early 1980s until he retired Professor Emeritus in 1991. In 1963-64 Stoller sabattical yes of 1963-64 was spent as a visiting architect at the National Design Institute in Ahmedabad, India. To the extent possible within a conventional architectural curriculum, Stoller used real sites and exposed his students to the manufacturing process of materials through visits to factories. For one design class Stoller started the Wurster West Workshop, a studio in San Francisco where students gained practical experience in planning, construction, and client relationships by working in poor neighborhoods. In 1965 Stoller started a program called Continuing Education in Environmental Design in collaboration with the University of California Extension. Several courses were instituted for architecture, planning, landscape architecture, and design professionals. In1966-67, as the internship component of the program, Stoller founded the pioneering San Francisco Community Design Center, a response both to student concerns about inequities in housing and community concerns about redevelopment plans. Marquis & Stoller, Stoller/Partners and Stoller Knoerr received many awards. In 1968 he was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, and in 1991 he was awarded the Berkeley Citation by the University of California. Stoller lived with his second wife Rosemary Raymond Stoller, also a Black Mountain student, in Berkeley in a Julia Morgan House which they restored.
Sources: From Black Mountain College Project website: http://www.bmcproject.org/Biographies/STOLLERclaude/STOLLERclaudeBIO.htm
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Indexed terms
About this collection guide
- Date Encoded:
- This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2026-08-12 16:03:36 -0700 .
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Collection is open for research.
- Terms of access:
-
All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in the collection should be discussed with the Curator
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of Item], Claude Stoller Papers, Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley.
- Location of this collection:
-
230 Bauer Wurster Hall #1820Berkeley, CA 94720-1820, US
- Contact:
- (510) 642-5124