A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living will examine the work of Archibald Quincy Jones (1913–1979), who practiced architecture in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1979. The Hammer Museum's exhibition is the first major museum retrospective of Jones's work. The exhibition draws from significant design collections, including Jones's personal and professional archives, housed at UCLA's Special Collections, and is organized thematically, providing in-depth vignettes presenting his design work in housing communities, large custom-designed residences, commercial facilities, and institutional buildings, and his role as an educator and design advocate. Projects on view include housing developments for the Mutual Housing Association and Eichler Homes, Inc.; Sunnylands, the desert estate of Walter and Leonore Annenberg; headquarters of the furniture manufacturer Herman Miller in Zeeland, Michigan; St. Michael and All Angel's Episcopal Church in Studio City; Warner Bros. Records in Burbank; and houses for Gary and Veronica Cooper and Frances and Sidney Brody, among others. The exhibition includes architectural drawings and models, historic Julius Shulman photographs, and newly commissioned photographs by the New York-based photographer Jason Schmidt. The exhibition is organized by guest curator Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, assistant curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Ellen Donnelly is a curatorial fellow at the Hammer Museum. She received an March and an MS in design research from the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan and a BA in urban design and architectural studies from New York University. In addition to teaching design studio, construction, and design fundamentals courses at the University of Michigan, she was a research assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for the exhibition Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture (2006) and was an assistant in the Education Department of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher joined the SFMOMA staff in November 2007 as associate curator in Architecture + Design. In this role, she worked on exhibitions including: Patterns of Speculation: J. Mayer H (2009), Ewan Gibbs (2010), ParaDesign and Tobias Wong (2011); The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area (2012). Recent published essays include "Shift," published in the Ewan Gibbs: America exhibition catalog, and "This is a Mirror," on the work of Tobias Wong for blanco sobre blanco. Fletcher has been Acting Head of the Architecture + Design Department since May 2011. She received a master's in curatorial studies of contemporary art from Bard College , and a master's in architecture history and theory from Harvard University.

Brooke Hodge, editor of, and contributor to the exhibition catalogue, is the Hammer's director of exhibitions and publications, was formerly curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001–09) where she organized many exhibitions devoted to contemporary architecture including What's Shakin': New Architecture in L.A. (2001), Frank O. Gehry: Work in Progress (2003), Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture (2006), and Feathered Edge: A New Installation by Ball-Nogues Studio (2009). Hodge has more than twenty-five years of experience organizing architecture exhibitions and writing about architecture and design. In 2001, she was cocurator (together with Dietrich Neumann and Thomas Michie) of Richard Neutra's Windshield House, co-organized by the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Art Museum.

Miko McGinty is an award-winning graphic designer who frequently works with the Hammer Museum. Her Brooklyn-based firm, McGinty, has designed many books and exhibition catalogues for the Museum including Rachel Whiteread Drawings (2010), Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield (2010), Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 (2011), Glenn Ligon America (2011), and Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective (2010). Collaborations with artists, curators, and photographers are central to McGinty's practice and inform the unique design of each book.

Jason Schmidt is an internationally recognized portrait, fashion, interior, and architectural photographer based in New York. His photographs have been published in the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wallpaper, House & Garden, and British Vogue. In 2007, his book Artists: Portraits of Contemporary Artists Shot throughout the World over the Last Five Years was published by Steidl , and a second volume will be published this year. Schmidt and Hodge have collaborated on numerous projects since 1997 including Gio Ponti & the Villa Planchart (an exhibition for Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and Art Museum); The Favela-Bairro Project (a GSD exhibition and publication, 1999); and, most recently, an in-depth feature on the artist Roy McMakin for Wallpaper*. Schmidt will provide new photography for the exhibition and catalog.

In the spirit of A. Quincy Jones's collaborative approach, Hodge has assembled a team to collaborate with her on the exhibition and publication. In addition, the team is supplemented by an advisory committee comprising leading scholars on mid-century architecture, design, and landscape architecture. This committee includes Thomas S. Hines, UCLA professor emeritus of architectural history and an expert on Richard Neutra and modern architecture in Los Angeles; Cory Buckner, a practicing architect and author of the only monograph to date on the work of A. Quincy Jones; Frederick Fisher, a practicing architect who is currently renovating several of Jones's most important buildings including Sunnylands (the Annenberg estate in Rancho Mirage, California) and whose architecture office is located in Jones & Emmons's own former office building in Los Angeles; Peter Loughrey, director of Los Angeles Modern Auctions and an acknowledged expert on mid-century interior furnishings; E. Marc Treib, University of California, Berkeley professor emeritus of architecture and coauthor of Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living; Mayer Rus, currently the Design and Culture Editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, former editor of Interior Design magazine, and a frequent contributor to Architectural Digest and Wallpaper*; and Elizabeth A. T. Smith, the curator of MOCA's important exhibitions on Rudolf Schindler and the Case Study House program, and currently curatorial director at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada.

The Hammer Museum explores the capacity of art to impact and illuminate our lives. Through its collections, exhibitions, and programs, the Hammer examines the depth and diversity of artistic expression through the centuries with a special emphasis on art of our time. At the core of the Hammer's mission is the recognition that artists play a crucial role in all aspects of human experience. The Hammer advances UCLA's mission by contributing to the intellectual life of the University and the world beyond. The Hammer was founded in 1988, and opened to the public in 1990.