Architectural photographer Joe Aker has given a collection of images to the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections.

The Aker Architectural Photographic Records Collection comprises roughly 50,000 distinct images depicting scenes of commercial architecture over the past three decades.

Aker, owner of Aker Imaging, has worked with leading architecture and real estate firms, such as Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Robert A.M. Stern, César Pelli, Pickard Chilton, Kohn Pedersen Fox, Philip Johnson, HOK, Kirksey and Ziegler Cooper; as well as Gerald D. Hines Interests and Trammell Crow.

In 2011, Aker began considering the future for his vast collection of photography. He contacted UH Special Collections, whose mission is to preserve, safeguard, organize, and describe primary sources in a number of collecting areas for teaching and research activities of students and scholars.

The Aker collection offers a rare view of the architectural landscape in Houston and other major cities, including a photographic record of original models of structures that were never built, as well as plans, renderings, models and final photography of the finished buildings. What makes this collection of images special are the many photographs showing the process of design from the first drawing of the first model to the final design model and the finished building.

Aker was one of the first to digitally produce structural model composites before the advent of computer-generated graphics. Working with Houston digital artist Raphaele Malandain, he would photograph a site where a building was set to be constructed, photograph the building model, and drop the model image onto the site image using analog film composition, resulting in a close representation of the future finished building.

As a whole, Aker says, the collection tells a fascinating story of Houston’s economic booms and busts. For more information on this new and growing collection, contact Vince Lee.

Thanks to Vince Lee and Esmeralda Fisher for text.