During the late 1940s a series of ‘AA Scrap Books’ were put together, collating ephemera and documents dating right back to the AA’s foundation in 1847. The AA Archives are now engaged in the long process of digitising, cataloguing and re-housing all the material within appropriate materials and archival conditions. These previously unavailable collections will shortly be made accessible through the Archive’s online catalogue and can be consulted in person at the AA Archives.
Currently we are cataloguing the 1933-39 volume and are finding in excess of 100 exhibition catalogues, invitations, posters, membership cards, voting papers, documents and other ephemera… Of special interest are, shown below, an invitation card for the 1935 ‘Ideas in Architecture’ exhibition held by AA students in the Building Centre; a poster advertising Berthold Lubetkin lecturing on the USSR, at the AA in 1937; an invitation for a 1930s exhibition of Erich Mendelsohn’s original drawings; a programme for a 1939 reunion of the ‘Class of 1919’, signed by over 40 alumni and former staff.
