The collection includes design drawings and sketches, photographs, screen prints, school assignments in the form of hand-outs and lecture notes, and a notebook Joseph Marcella created while attending Parsons School of Design. A theme running throughout Marcella's student work is his interest in exploring options for shelter in inhospitable environments, and a reduction in ecological harm through thoughtful design.

The General folder includes a copy of Marcella's admissions essay for CalArts, in which he provides information about his educational background and interests. The essay is useful for understanding the types of records associated with the projects in the collection, as he describes the exercises and methodologies used to investigate each design problem, such as SCAN ("Speculative Calculative Assimilation Network") drawings and wordplay associations ("Synection Sessions").

Project documentation in the collection includes an inhabitation for the Apollo space station, a "four-legged, one-piece fiberglass shell" stackable chair, an inflatable underwater habitat, and a portable recreational shelter consisting of reflective panels, which Marcella deemed a "M.E.S.S." (Modular Environmental Structural System).

M.E.S.S. documentation includes photographs of small-scale models and a full-size fiberglass prototype in various states of construction, templates for the model, and a press kit for an industry-sponsored design conference to which Marcella was invited. The press kit features a designer's statement in which Marcella notes that one of his aims is to reduce visual pollution and humankind's overall impact upon the environment.

Earth Day materials consist of photographs (black and white prints and color slides), press releases, and screen printed posters advertising teach-ins by Daniel Gildesgame, Stewart Brand, Immanuel Velikovsky, and D. W. (Dery) Bennett, and planning documents, including a letter from Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Documentation also includes a floor-by-floor layout of Parsons' facilities on East 54th Street. The school re-located to 66 Fifth Avenue in 1972, shortly after Marcella's graduation.