Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library

Soon after 1868, the Arts Library was established as part of the Yale University Library, one of the great libraries in the world, and in 2008 it was renamed the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library. Located within the Paul Rudolph Hall–Jeffrey H. Loria Center for the History of Art complex, it contains more than 120,000 volumes on architecture, painting, sculpture, graphic design, urban planning, drama, and the history of art and architecture. It serves as the working library for the School of Architecture, the School of Art, the History of Art department, the School of Drama, and the Yale University Art Gallery, and as an adjunct library for the Yale Center for British Art. The collection includes basic reference works, monographs, exhibition catalogues, an expanding range of digital resources, and histories of the aforementioned fields, bound periodicals, and subscriptions to more than 500 current periodicals and museum bulletins. Approximately 200,000 additional volumes in these fields may be found in related collections at two other Yale libraries: Sterling Memorial Library and the Library Shelving Facility.

The Haas Family Arts Library staff gladly assists students and faculty in exploring the enormously rich library resources at Yale and offers a wide-ranging instructional program aimed at quickly initiating new members of the community into the complex world of information resources.

Visual Resources Collection

The Visual Resources Collection, a department of Sterling Memorial Library, is charged with collection development for digital visual media in the fine arts and architecture. Located in the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, the Visual Resources Collection offers a Digital Library of more than 370,000 images reflecting faculty teaching and research interests. The staff is available to assist the Yale community with their image needs.

Fabrication Shops

Graduate and undergraduate students use the School’s fabrication shops in support of studio and course work assignments, as well as for independent projects. They include fully equipped facilities for building models, fabricating furniture, sculpting, and exploring building systems. Students work with a wide variety of materials, including wood and wood products, plastics, and ferrous and nonferrous metals. Beyond the normal fabricating equipment and tools usually found in wood and metal shops, the School’s equipment includes laser cutters, a waterjet cutter, three-axis CNC mills, and programmable robots. Students with shop experience may apply to the fabrication shop’s coordinator for positions as shop monitors.

All incoming students take the Summer Shops Techniques Course during the week before classes begin. This intensive course teaches students how to work safely in the shop while exposing them to a wide range of tools and procedures. During the year, staff is available to assist students with their projects. Individual instruction is always available from the staff and monitors. First-year M.Arch. I students use the fabrication shops to fabricate elements for the Building Project.

Advanced Technology Facilities

Advanced technology and integrated information systems are an integral part of the School’s curriculum. The School provides students with a high-quality and robust information infrastructure, including cloud-based personal storage for each student and unlimited network storage for individual classes and studios. The School has its own proprietary digital media facilities that consist of cloud-based servers for high-quality distributed information systems; two advanced computer labs; an imaging and 3-D scanning lab; a printing lab with more than fifty 3-D printers able to print in plastic, plaster, clay, and resin; and dedicated printing rooms and plotting clusters outfitted with photocopiers and large-format plotters on each studio floor. Large-scale high-resolution display monitors on carts are available on all studio floors. All students are provided with a high-end workstation, preloaded with a wide array of software and integrated design tools, and two LCD monitors. The School also provides facilities and resources for students’ design, research, computational, communication, and fabrication needs. Available for checkout at no cost are digital cameras, drawing tablets, and camcorders. Students at the School also have access to the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media at 149 York Street, an interdisciplinary arts research center that bridges diverse arts disciplines and fosters critical inquiry at the intersections of visual art, design, film, music/sound, performance, and computer science.