
Earlier this year the Hamilton Library at University of Hawaii at Manoa was awarded a Preservation and Access grant from the Hawaii Council for the Humanities to aid in the preserving and digitizing of their Ossipoff Collection. Global Track student Bruce White was asked to submit a letter highlighting the importance of the collection to architecture students at the School of Architecture.
The Ossipoff & Snyder Architects Collection was graciously donated to the UHM Libarary by Ossipoff's longtime partner, Sid Snyder. The donation of the firm's project files includes original design drawings and specifications for over 500 structures. Vladimir Ossipoff (1907-1998) was Hawaii's foremost modernist architect with a career spanning more than sixty years. His firm worked on over 800 projects from homes to iconic buildings, including the IBM Building, expansion of the Honolulu International Airport, the Pacific Club, Outrigger Canoe Club, National Tropical Botanical Garden, Punahou School’s Thurston Chapel, Queen’s Medical Center, Waikiki Aquarium renovations, the Liljestrand House, and Wailea Development Company.

Global Track student Bruce White was invited by the Ossipoff & Snyder Collections' managing librarian to write a letter to be included in the grant application discussing the collection's value to architecture students in Hawaii. A portion of that letter reads:
"A great challenge myself and many other students here at the University of Hawaii face is that our geographic isolation makes traveling difficult and expensive. This limits our opportunities to visit and gain exposure to some of the most important architecture in the country and across the world. In Ossipoff’s buildings we have the opportunity to study top-
tier architecture locally, and the Ossipoff & Snyder Collection allows us to do so in a more comprehensive way."
With more of the collection now being documented and digitized, architecture students and others can study the work of Vladimir Ossipoff even during these times when COVID-19 makes visiting the collection in person difficult. We're thankful that our Global Track program can be a part of the strong architecture community here in Honolulu and at UH, and for the efforts of UHM Library to look after and preserve the collection.
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