The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture records, bulk 1979-2012

Planning for a "Study Center for American Architecture" at Columbia University began as early as 1979. Major early proponents included Phyllis Lambert, James Polshek, Edgar Kaufman, Adolf Placzek, Robert AM Stern, Ada Louise Huxtable, Vincent Scully, and IM Pei. Securing funding, space, and an identity distinct from Avery or GSAP [Preservation had yet to be added] were of primary concern.

Members of the Advisory Board searched for donors to supply the $5 million necessary to establish the Center. Initial funding was provided by the Kaplan Foundation, Phyllis Lambert, and Columbia alumnus and architect Temple Hoyne ("Sandy") Buell. Columbia offered space for the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture in the building then known as East Hall, home to the Columbia Maison Française since 1977. The oldest building on Morningside campus – and the only remaining one predating Columbia's presence at this site – it had housed numerous departments and organizations from 1885 to 1985 and required extensive renovation.

Robert AM Stern served as the Center's first director from 1983 to 1988. Its inaugural project was American Architecture: Innovation and Tradition, an exhibition showcasing the diversity of America's regional architecture. Stern oversaw symposia on Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, architectural publishing in America, Hispanic traditions in American architecture, and the first "Buell Talks." He secured funding for an oral history project (the Johnson Tapes), and published Vincent Scully's Architecture of the American Summer: The Flowering of the Shingle Style (Rizzoli, 1987). In 1989, philanthropist Arthur Ross donated money for conversion of the building's first floor to exhibition space.

Gwendolyn Wright served as the Center's second director from 1989 to 1992. Among other projects, she initiated the Buell's first dissertation fellowship, oversaw a symposium about German influences on American architecture and organized the Center's first major seminar series, History of American Architecture. Lectures from leading architects and historians were published in The History of History in American Schools of Architecture (Princeton AP, 1990). Under her leadership, the Buell Center cosponsored a conference at City Hall, titled Building the City We Need, to mark the 1990 mayoral transition. She was followed by the directorship of Richard Buford in 1992.

Joan Ockman served as the fourth director between 1993 and 2008. Under her directorship, the Buell Center worked to fundraise in support of more substantial projects and fellowships that would further define its identity as a premier institution in American architecture. Ockman's tenure began with a 1994 symposium on Frank Lloyd Wright, and her early years were defined by series, Constructive Criticism (1995), Public Space (1995), Landscape As Social Space (1996), Imagining America (1997), Culture Is Our Business (2001) Out of Ground Zero (2002), and Modern Architecture American Modernity (2004-2005). Her later directorship was characterized by panels, conferences, and notable publications including Out of Ground Zero: Case Studies in Urban Reinvention (Prestel, 2002), Symbolic Essence and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American Culture (Yale University Press, 2005), Architourism: Authentic, Escapist, Exotic, Spectacular (Prestel, 2005), and the FORuM series with Princeton AP. Under Ockman's leadership, the Center hosted its inaugural Buell Dissertation Colloquium in 1995.

Reinhold Martin served as the Buell's fifth director from 2008 to 2021, turning the Center towards what he termed "matters of public concern." This began with the theme of housing (in the wake of the financial crisis) and the pamphlet "Public Housing: A New Conversation" (2009), and eventually formalized as major projects House Housing (2013-2016) and Power: Infrastructure in America (2016-2021). Exhibitions and public programs that grew from these projects include Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream (MoMA, 2012), House Housing: An Untimely History of Architecture and Real Estate (traveling, 2014-2016), Living in America: Frank Lloyd Wright, Harlem & Modern Housing (Lenfest Center, 2017), and The Green New Deal: A Public Assembly (The Queens Museum, 2019). Significant publications from this period include The Buell Hypothesis (2011), Comments on Foreclosed (2012), The Art of Inequality: Architecture, Housing, and Real Estate—A Provisional Report (2015), several exhibition books, and e-publications The A&E System (2020) and Green Reconstruction (2022). Martin oversaw the creation of the University of Minnesota Press series Buell Center Books in the History and Theory of American Architecture, and inaugurated the ACSA Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change, and Society.

Lucia Allais became the Buell Center's sixth director in 2022, focusing research and events on the relationship between architecture and land. The project's first outcomes include a conversation series and book titled Architecture and Land in and Out of the Americas (2023) and "100 Links," an installation with AD-WO at the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial. As of 2025, a second series on Architecture and Abundance is ongoing, while an exhibition, Before you were here, addresses the long history of campus land. In addition to continuing the Buell Dissertation Colloquium and the Climate Prize, Allais inaugurated a Buell Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2023, with GSAPP and the Society of Fellows / Heyman Center for the Humanities.