About Us

Paul & Verla Neel Resource Center (NRC) 05-101

The College's Neel Resource Center (NRC) is located in Architecture Building 05, Room 101. For directions, please see the Campus Map.


HOURS

Please contact the CAED at caed@calpoly.edu for the most up-to-date hours.
 

About Us


The Paul & Verla Neel Resource Center (NRC) collects, maintains, and provides access to architecture and environmental design-related resources. The NRC's Collections include books, periodicals, slide and digital images, working drawings, and material samples. These various resources strengthen the College of Architecture & Environmental Design's educational mission of offering textual, visual, and digital resources on architecture design, practice, and history; building technology; urban planning; and landscape architecture CAED's faculty and students.

The NRC was founded in 1967, principally as a book and slide library. Since then, it has expanded to include collections of building plans, educational DVDs, and 24,000 digital images. During the 2007-08 academic year, the NRC was substantially renovated and augmented to include a Materials Sample Collection.

The NRC provides a comfortable environment for study, research and browsing. Our staff can help students and faculty navigate library databases, refine search terms, and suggest new search strategies. The individual assistance offered by the NRC staff aims to provide students with skilled information research techniques and formal analysis for the practice of architecture and the environmental design-related fields.

The NRC is generously supported by the continual donations from Paul and Verla Neel Fund.

Collections


The Neel Resource Center's Book, Periodical, and Image collections are specialized collections intended to complement or supplement the collections of Kennedy Library. These collections support the particular needs of CAED's students and faculty by providing architecture and environmental design resources for both general and specific research purposes.

NEEL BOOK COLLECTION

Neel NRC Book Database 

Major focal areas of the Neel Book Collection include:

  • New technologies in architecture, landscape architecture and urban design
  • Energy uses and conservation
  • Sustainability in architecture, landscape architecture
  • Reference materials on green building products
  • Details on modern building design
     

CIRCULATION PERIODS

Books: One week
Periodicals: One week
DVD's: Three days
Material Samples: one week
References: NRC use only      
                            

NEEL MATERIAL SAMPLES COLLECTION

The NRC has amassed a large Materials Collection of building materials, approximately 7,000 samples that offer students hands-on experience with actual samples of innovative and sustainable materials used in the built environment.

Materials are central to all disciplines focused on the Architecture-Engineering-Construction industry. A Materials Library was created at Cal Poly as a learning resource for all students in the CAED intended to prepare them to enter a fast-paced world with a well-developed knowledge base and value set regarding resource use.
 

NEEL DIGITAL IMAGE DATABASE

The Neel NRC’s Digital Image Database (NRC-DID) contains approximately 24,000 images and is a joint and on-going project created and augmented with the cooperation of faculty, students, and the NRC staff. The CAED faculty, students, and alumni donate their travel slides to the NRC-DID collection. The NRC staff supplement these donated travel images with scanned images from books in the public domain.

Major subject areas of the NRC-DID include:

  • CAED Archive of student Studio Project  and Competition entries
  • European, Asian and African architectural works, city parks and gardens (both historic and contemporary).
  • Historic city views and plans

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Upcoming Events

  • Fall Term Classes Begin: September 20