Building Construction: Plans and Drawings

This guide provides recommended resources for research in this discipline.

Architectural Drawings

The Art & Architecture Library houses a collection of approximately 500 architectural working drawings. Coverage ranges from local campus buildings to national airports, libraries, museums, and residences.

We are currently in the process of digitizing the architectural drawings collection. You can request access to digitized versions of the drawings by emailing Sarah Stanley (sarahstanley@vt.edu). Some digitized drawings are also available on Artstor. Physical drawings do not circulate and must be used in the library between 9am - 5pm Monday through Friday.

The Art & Architecture Drawings Database allows you to search drawing records.
The List of Architectural Drawings provides a complete list of drawings. Use the tabs at the bottom to sort by Structure, Creator, or Location.

Other Resources for Drawings and Plans

Artstor
Artstor provides high quality images of visual media like paintings, photographs, architecture, sculpture, decorative arts, and other forms of visual culture. It provides tools to create, manage, and present collections of images. Prehistoric times-present.
Artstor's ever-increasing digital library includes more than 1.9 million high-quality images for education and research from a wide variety of contributors around the world. Dozens of collections from a wide variety of cultures across all major time periods have followed, including a collection of 190,000 old master drawings originally photographed at over 100 different repositories, 20 years of contemporary New York City gallery shows, archives of Islamic textiles, the restored Ghiberti "Gates of Paradise," African masks, medieval manuscripts, images of all exhibitions shown at MoMA, and many others.

Artstor facilitates research and education in numerous disciplines, including art and visual studies, architecture, religion, anthropology and archaeology, global studies, fashion and costume, classics, world history, and more. Our library is solely available for teaching, education and scholarship, with all images supported with comprehensive metadata and cleared for educational use.
Building Types Online
Building Types Online provides information on buildings and structures around the world. Maps, architectural drawings, photos, and bibliographies are included.
Birkhäuser Building Types Online is a resource for the study and practice of architectural design. It is based on the publisher's high international standing in professional architecture books, on the knowledge of the authors and editors who are leading experts in their fields, as well as on the technical quality of the illustrations. The database offers highly flexible and detailed search and browse access to the contents of the Birkhäuser program on building types. All content was written and selected by internationally renowned authors in architectural design.
HathiTrust
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The HathiTrust Digital Library contains over seven million volumes and over one billion pages of scanned books and other materials. About 20 percent of all content is in the public domain (and accessible to you). You can also browse several public collections. Content is available in several image formats, text, and PDF. 1200s-present.