Image Bank: History of the Collection

The Design Center’s image collection originated as a project-based collection. In the early 1990s, Bill Morrish, founding Design Center Director, saw low-level oblique aerial photography as a unique tool to help citizens understand the urban landscape, both built and natural. In such photographs, patterns and connections that are not easy seen from the ground become readily visible. Over the years the Design Center chartered helicopters and photographed project areas. Various other regional locations that served as both good and bad examples of urban design were also documented. The collection of 35mm slides remained in our slide library in a series of project-themed binders, accessible to few beyond Design Center staff.

As the collection grew we found ourselves using images for a variety of purposes and projects, well beyond the project-specific focus they initially served. In addition, we increasingly received requests to use our images. We honored requests when possible but had to maintain careful control of the original slides to prevent loss and damage to the collection. In 1998 the Design Center received a grant from the College or Architecture and Landscape Architecture, with a focus to increase access to our collection. With the grant, the collection was consolidated, organized, and a portion of it was digitized.

Digitizing the collection greatly expanded our ability to share images and the number of requests increased as word spread. Requests were diverse, ranging from design firms wanting images of a particular project location to content-specific requests, such as the Minnesota Science Museum’s search for images that illustrated housing next to wetlands for use in an educational display. When Ann Forsyth, former Design Center Director, assumed her position in 2002 she quickly realized the value of the collection and sought funding to make the existing collection more broadly available and to expand it. In 2003, the Design Center received a grant from The McKnight Foundation to complete digitizing the image collection and to create the online searchable database you see today.

The evolution from an in-house collection used by few for projects and teaching to an online searchable database open to the public has created a much broader role for the Image Bank. To meet this challenge we will continue to add to the collection. In late 2003, we received a grant from The McKnight Foundation to further expand the range of images and to photograph areas that are currently missing from the collection. With this grant we will be adding aerial images that highlight the interface between metropolitan growth and collar counties; growth centers adjacent to wildlife corridors; areas where green space is limited as is access to it; and Twin Cities metro communities not covered in earlier projects. We will also be adding eye level photographs that illustrate livability and development issues such as density and open space and historical images of Twin Cities growth and development from existing private collections. If you have suggestions for areas we should photograph, click on “Suggestions for new images” on the navigation bar to the left.

 





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