parametric batik patterns trace indonesian consulate building’s facade in jeddah, saudi arabia

Ibrahim Joharji designs Indonesian Consulate Building in Jeddah

The Indonesian Consulate Building in Jeddah by Ibrahim Joharji Architects contributes to the architectural landscape of diplomatic facilities in Saudi Arabia, where design carries both functional and symbolic roles. Diplomatic buildings are not only workplaces but also representations of national identity, requiring architecture to mediate between protocol, security, and cultural expression. The project is structured around a hierarchy of use, organizing spaces for diplomats, administrators, and staff through layered circulation systems. This spatial framework embeds distinctions of function and authority into the overall plan.

Navigating multiple regulatory frameworks, the design responds to the Saudi Building Code and incorporates references to Indonesia’s architectural heritage, which spans 28 recognized styles. Elements of the Rumah Gadang roofline were reinterpreted in a contemporary form, while triangular geometries derived from the peci, an Indonesian headpiece, were integrated as motifs of dignity and structure.

Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah by Ibrahim Joharji Architects | all images courtesy of Ibrahim Joharji Architects

Architecture as a framework for diplomacy and urban presence

The facade design combines cultural influences from both Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. Parametric patterns inspired by Indonesian Batik were interwoven with Islamic geometric references, producing a layered skin that operates as both shading and cultural signifier. Material choices were evaluated for their environmental impact. Reinforced concrete provides the necessary security measures, while facade systems, finishes, and mechanical components were selected to improve energy performance and reduce the building’s carbon footprint.

The Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah, by Ibrahim Joharji Architects Studio, illustrates how diplomatic architecture functions at the intersection of culture, regulation, and sustainability. By combining symbolic references with practical performance, the building establishes a framework where architecture supports diplomatic presence while contributing to the urban and environmental context.

a diplomatic building balancing function and cultural identity

triangular geometries inspired by the peci headpiece

facade patterns draw from Indonesian Batik traditions

islamic geometric references integrated into the skin

project info:

name: Indonesian Consulate Building – Jeddah
architects: Ibrahim Joharji Architects | @inj_architect

lead architect: Ibrahim Nawaf Joharji

client: Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia – Jeddah

location: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

built area: ~5,800 sqm

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house in oia by kapsimalis architects embeds white prisms along greek volcanic landscape

White plaster prisms shape KAPSIMALIS ARCHITECTS’ HOUSE IN OIA

Located on the outskirts of the traditional village of Oia in Santorini, Greece, this residence by Kapsimalis Architects overlooks the surrounding vineyards and the Aegean Sea. The site is accessed via a narrow pedestrian path connecting the village’s main street on the caldera ridge to the cultivated hillside below.

The design responds to both the settlement and the rural landscape. A slim rectangular plot with an existing stone berm informed the composition, which combines subterranean spaces with freestanding volumes. White plaster prisms of varying dimensions are arranged across the ground and upper levels, referencing the island’s cubistic architectural tradition. These structures contain the private and semi-private areas of the house, while the voids between them form shared spaces linked to outdoor courtyards. Patios and skylights enhance natural light and create continuity across horizontal and vertical planes.

all images by Giorgos Sfakianakis

Kapsimalis Architects Draws from Santorini’s cave typology

For the lower level, the design team at Kapsimalis Architects adopts the typology of Santorini’s cave dwellings. Subterranean rooms are positioned side by side, extending inward and opening only through the existing stone wall. This floor accommodates a sitting area, office, wine cellar with bar, gym with sauna and bathroom, and two guest suites.

On the ground floor, spaces include an entrance hall, dining and living areas, kitchen, bedroom with en-suite bathroom, guest WC, library corner, and an internal stair. This level connects to multiple outdoor zones: a courtyard with water surface and floating dining table to the north, a protected patio with barbecue to the west, a smaller lounge with fireplace to the east, and a private yard with plunge pool further north. The upper floor houses two bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms and private terraces. Outdoor areas continue across the site with Mediterranean planting, herbs, and vines, framing the residential complex. A larger swimming pool and lounge areas are integrated into the main yard.

the residence sits on the outskirts of the traditional village of Oia in Santorini

House in Oia is defined by Light tones and clean lines

Materials emphasize continuity with local building traditions: volcanic stone from the site is reused for the facade and perimeter walls, complemented by white plastered surfaces, white-painted timber for windows, iroko wood pergolas, and marble paving in beige and grey tones. Bioclimatic strategies were applied throughout. These include planted roofs, water features, thick masonry walls, high-performance insulation, and strategically placed openings based on orientation.

The interior reflects the architectural language of the exterior. Light tones, clean lines, and built-in furniture define the ground and upper levels, while the subterranean spaces adopt curvilinear geometries with darker, earthy colors. Materials such as natural stone, wood, and metal-glass elements are used consistently across levels, establishing cohesion while allowing subtle contrasts between spaces.

House in Oia by Kapsimalis Architects overlooks vineyards and the Aegean Sea

the ground floor contains living spaces arranged around courtyards

subterranean rooms reference Santorini’s cave dwelling typology

skylights and patios enhance natural light throughout the house

a plunge pool is positioned within a private enclosed patio

freestanding volumes and voids define private and shared spaces

project info:

name: House in Oia

architect: Kapsimalis Architects | @kapsimalisarchitects

location: Oia, Santorini, Greece

photographer: Giorgos Sfakianakis | @g_sfakianakis

photography stylist: Katia Maria Sarantidou

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

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philip butler captures britain’s petrol age through 226 garages and service stations

Philip Butler Frames an Architectural Vernacular

Photographer Philip Butler turns his lens on a vanishing piece of Britain’s built landscape in his book 226 Garages and Service Stations. The publication catalogues the nation’s petrol age in 252 pages, capturing an architectural lineage that spans Mock-Tudor fantasies, streamlined moderne curves, and humble repair shops tucked into railway arches or converted chapels. Published in the spirit of Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), Butler’s survey reveals how the evolution of motoring shaped the architectural vernacular of the 20th century.

Black Cat Garage, Bampton, Devon c.1930 | all images by Philip Butler

226 Garages and Service Stations highlights adaptive reuse

Worcestershire-based photographer Philip Butler also highlights adaptive reuse through 226 Garages and Service Stations. As demand for vehicle testing surged in the 1960s, disused cinemas, churches, fire stations, and even factories were pressed into service. St John’s Garage in Wigtownshire, once a Presbyterian church, and a former fire station at Hythe, illustrate the improvisational quality of British motoring infrastructure. Some abandoned sites found gentler afterlives: a decommissioned filling station in Withypool, Devon, now serves as a tearoom popular with bikers and classic car enthusiasts.

Certain landmarks, however, remain architectural showpieces. Michelin House in Chelsea, completed in 1911 by François Espinasse, fused British Art Nouveau with the French tire company’s branding, its stained glass, glazed terracotta tiles, and tire-shaped cupolas setting a benchmark for corporate architecture. In Leeds, Appleyard’s Neo-Georgian garage by Sir Reginald Blomfield (1932) married municipal formality with automotive convenience, complete with an octagonal hut and circular forecourt.

Manor Road Garage, East Preston, West Sussex, 1934

post-war futurism: concrete canopies and sci-fi silhouettes

As automobiles began to dominate British roads in the early 1900s, garages emerged to service, repair, and refuel these machines. What started as pragmatic structures soon mirrored broader design currents. In the 1920s, concerns over visual blight led to regulations that produced unexpected hybrids: rustic thatched filling stations, like The Garage Marsdon, where petrol pumps stood incongruously beneath combustible roofs. Elsewhere, Black Cat Garage in Devon followed the period’s obsession with faux-medieval beams, while at Brooklands motor circuit, oil companies erected rival pagoda-style kiosks to mark their territory at the racetrack.

By the 1930s, the aerodynamic glamour of the Modernist movement found expression in structures like Manor Road Garage in West Sussex, its rounded corners and flat roofs echoing ocean liners and aircraft. Yet for every statement building, there were understated workshops such as Central Garage Tegryn in Pembrokeshire, modestly disguising pitched roofs behind stepped façades. Post-war Britain brought reinforced concrete into play, as seen in Islington’s 1958 Athenaeum Service Station canopy, whose starship-like silhouette recalls the science fiction craze of the era.

Across these 226 sites, Butler documents the cultural footprint of the combustion engine. As Britain moves toward an electric future, the book preserves the memory of a century when garages and petrol stations were landmarks rooted in their communities.

Former Colyford Filling Station, Devon, 1927-28

8 BP, Red Hill, Leicestershire. Originally Mobil, based on a 1964 design, 1979

Former Athenaeum Service Station, Islington, Greater London c.1955

Former C B Attride Motor Engineers, Broadstairs, Kent c. 1920s

Four Lanes Garage, Marston, Cheshire

Garage, Southbourne, Dorset

Michelin House, Chelsea, Greater London, 1911

Silver Street Garage, Kedington, Suffolk. Avery Hardoll Pump c.1960s

St John’s Garage 1947, Whithorn, Wigtownshire. Originally St John’s Church, 1892

the book catalogues the nation’s petrol age in 252 pages

project info:

name: 226 Garages and Service Stations

photographer & author: Philip Butler | @pbutlerphotography

publisher: FUEL | @fuelpublishing

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Bryan Sansivero Documents Otherworldly, Forgotten Houses in ‘America the Abandoned’

In many parts of rural America, the population keeps shrinking. Low birth rates, aging residents, and evolving or shuttering industries pair with a trend of younger people migrating to metro areas for jobs and more diverse cultural amenities. As of 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there are more than 15 million abandoned houses around the country, which have been left for myriad reasons ranging from foreclosures to structural issues to the death of inhabitants with no one else able or willing to shoulder the responsibility of a home and its furnishings.

Photographer Bryan Sansivero feels a strong pull to document and explore forgotten dwellings. His new book forthcoming from Artisan, America the Abandoned, explores deserted homes around the country in 200 striking images. From interiors strewn with garments, toys, knick-knacks, and decor to empty farmhouses gradually sagging into the prairie, he captures a spectral phenomenon ripe for storytelling.

Sansivero’s practice also revolves around portraiture, which lends itself to his approach of capturing these once-occupied houses. Although devoid of people, their enigmatic stories and vernacular personalities resonate through aged clapboard walls, overgrown shrubs, and forsaken belongings.

The images range from misty, haunting facades to everyday interiors. “These spaces are often littered with dust, mold, and creepy crawlies, and occasionally, they house one-of-a-kind relics: a tiger skin rug, a commemorative bicentennial piano, or a collection of mannequins,” the publisher says. “Taken together, this photographic collection serves as a time capsule—as an eerie reminder that everything we own is temporary and will eventually be forgotten.”

America the Abandoned is slated for release on October 14. Pre-order your copy on Bookshop, and check out more of Sansivero’s work on his website and Instagram.

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central tower rises from elliptical courtyard in V taller’s arched complex in mexico

V Taller completes regenerative tower in the jungles of Tulum

At the fringe of Tulum’s rapidly evolving landscape, V Taller architecture firm redefines what a tourism development can be with Babel, an establishment shaped by the jungle, mythology, and climate resilience. Commissioned by a client with a clear vision of referencing the biblical Tower of Babel and classical arches, the project departs from superficial symbolism to offer a deeper, site-sensitive response. The result is a vertically composed complex of 59 units organized around an elliptical courtyard, where architecture and nature coalesce to form a living system that is both contemplative and adaptable to future climatic and economic shifts.

Internally, the design maintains a sense of calm through natural materials, tropical wood carpentry, clay vessels, and white linen textiles, reinforcing the artisanal and contextual sensitivity of the project.

all images by Spaces by Conie, unless stated otherwise

Babel draws from the hammam typology

Upon encountering a site already scarred by human intervention amidst an otherwise untouched jungle, Mexico City-based V Taller rethinks the role of built form. The studio opts for vertical circulation cores to minimize land use and regenerate native vegetation, supporting environmental restoration and commercial viability, and offering a hybrid hospitality-residential program that flexibly accommodates various types of stay, rhythms of life, and occupancy cycles.

At the center of the scheme stands the tower, set precisely at the geometric centroid of the eye-shaped plan. The cylindrical structure draws from the typology of the hammam, using filtered natural light and material tactility to create an atmosphere of introspection. Its design culminates in a triangular stargazing aperture, a symbolic gesture linking the earthbound structure to the cosmos.

the design maintains a sense of calm through natural materials | image by Albers Studio

light tunnels, thermal pools, and layered vegetation

Light, shadow, and tactility guide the user’s experience throughout the complex. Stairwells act as light tunnels; arched thresholds frame shifts in scale and perception; and layered tropical vegetation choreographs transitions between public and private spaces. A circular pool at the tower’s base mirrors the form of the central void and supports passive cooling, while vaulted ceilings, cross-ventilation, and bioclimatic strategies enhance thermal performance without reliance on rooftop mechanical systems.

the vertically composed complex of 59 units is organized around an elliptical courtyard | image by Albers Studio

architecture and nature coalesce to form a living system adaptable to future climatic shifts | image by Albers Studio

commissioned by a client with a clear vision of referencing the biblical Tower of Babel

V Taller architecture firm redefines what a tourism development can be with Babel | image by Daniel Villanueva

the studio opts for vertical circulation cores to minimize land use | image by Daniel Villanueva

supporting environmental restoration and commercial viability | image by Albers Studio

filtered natural light and material tactility create an atmosphere of introspection | image by Albers Studio

the cylindrical structure draws from the typology of the hammam

a hybrid hospitality-residential program flexibly accommodates various types of stay

project info:

name: Babel
architect: V Taller | @vtaller

location: Tulum, Mexico
area: 6,176 square meters

construction: MAQTE Company (Alejandro Delgadillo) for the rough construction & Bramah Developments (Ricardo Ávila) for the complete project

interior design: Carlos and Pablo

lighting: Carlos and Pablo & V Taller

photography: Spaces by Conie | @spacesbyconie, Albers Studio | @alberstudio, Daniel Villanueva

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A Feat of Engineering Transports the World’s Best-Preserved Viking Ship to Its New Home

In 1903, on a farm in southeastern Norway, a once-in-a-lifetime discovery emerged from within a large yet unassuming mound in a field. When the spot was excavated in 1904, the mound revealed an entire Viking longship that had been interred in its entirety as a burial containing the remains of two women, several animals, and a wide array of elaborately decorated objects.

Known as the Oseberg Viking Ship after the name of the farm where it was discovered, the vessel is thought to have been built around 820 and buried around 834. Reconstructions over the past several decades have suggested that the ship was indeed built to sail, rather than having been designed specifically as a burial—a practice reserved for high-status individuals, for whom the ship provided passage into the afterlife. Nestled deep in the wet earth, the wood was remarkably preserved for more than 1,000 years, although much of it was crushed and degraded.

Initial restoration efforts of the Oseberg took more than 20 years, and experts tried to preserve as much of the structure as possible through the use of oils and resin to prevent the wood from crumbling. Today, around 90 percent of the ship’s composition is original, making it the best-preserved example in the world.

A feat of engineering and careful planning recently moved the Oseberg Viking Ship to a new permanent home, with the same relocation planned for two additional longships, the Gokstad and the Tune. For more than two years, the Oseberg has been encased in a steel framework that weighs more than 50 tons, allowing it to stay on site during construction of a new museum.

The ship has been on display at the Viking Ship Museum at the University of Oslo for almost a century. Over time, the combination of unstable restoration methods, lack of humidity control, and weakening supports began causing stress on the vessel, making it vulnerable to more damage if left in place.

In 2014, the government-backed Saving Oseberg project kicked off a 10-plus-year mission to not only further protect one of the most important Viking discoveries in the world, but make sure it could be enjoyed and studied for generations to come. In early 2023, construction commenced on a new space connected to the Viking Ship Museum’s original building, now renamed the Museum of the Viking Age. The expanded campus is slated to open in 2027.

On September 10, the 71-foot-long Oseberg ship, contained in its vibration-resistant steel crate, was lifted onto a steel track that conveyed it through a long hall and into its new exhibition space. The process took about 10 hours to move the ship 350 feet, with a maximum speed of around 10 inches per minute.

Director Aud V. Tønnessen celebrated the historic move, saying, “It is a ship that has been part of so much and has an afterlife that gives me chills to think about.” Tønnessen also told Norwegian news agency NTB, “I actually find it quite moving to think that it is now going on its final voyage.”

Learn more, and follow the progress of the Gokstad and the Tune, on the museum’s website and YouTube.

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Uncanny Papier-Mâché Creatures by Roberto Benavidez Mingle in ‘Bosch Beasts’

Most often associated with Mexico, the piñata’s origins may actually trace back to China. By the 14th century, the celebratory tradition of breaking open a container filled with treats had arrived in Europe. Then, Spanish colonists and missionaries imported the custom to Mexico during the 16th century, although a similar practice was already in use within Indigenous Mayan and Aztec communities in observation of special events. Today, piñatas are an integral element of cartonería, the Mexican craft of papier-mâché.

For Los Angeles-based artist Roberto Benavidez, the art of the piñata is a central tenet of a practice exploring intersecting themes of race, sexuality, humor, sin, and beauty. He draws upon the paper art form’s early religious significance in Mexico, when Spanish missionaries used a seven-pointed version as a tool for converting Indigenous people to Christianity. This motif, which appears in some of Benavidez’s distinctive sculptures, nods to its past colonial use.

“The points of the star represented the seven deadly sins, the blindfold worn by the bat-wielding assailant represented faith, and the treats found inside were the rewards for blind and unwavering belief,” Diva Zumaya says in an exhibition essay for the artist’s current solo exhibition, Bosch Beasts, at Perrotin.

Benavidez continues to make piñata-like sculptures that resemble uncanny, hybrid creatures, often inspired by the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts and the surreal characters in Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” which the Netherlandish artist painted between 1490 and 1510.

Bosch Beasts highlights Benavidez’s ongoing fascination with the rare and extraordinary, exhibiting new works alongside pieces he’s made throughout the past decade. Installed on the floor or suspended from the ceiling, his creatures appear independently occupied and immersed in an esoteric group activity.

Each piece comes to life through papier-mâché, using a balloon to create the central form before adding more structure with Bristol board and additional layers of glue-slathered paper. Wire supports more delicate limbs and appendages, and to achieve the final texture, Benavidez cuts and attaches every tiny feather or scale.

“Drawing from his personal experience as a queer and mixed-race Mexican
American, Benavidez starts from a foundation of hybridity in which these monsters are the perfect actors,” Zumaya says, continuing:

Every mixed-race person who has become well acquainted with the question, “What are you?” is all too familiar with how it feels to live at the borders of identities, appearances complicating the compulsion to categorize. The way Benavidez uses these hybrid bodies to conjure ideas around race echoes their meaning in sixteenth-century Europe, where notions of the monstrous were profoundly intertwined with early formations of race.

Bosch Beasts continues through October 18 in Los Angeles. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

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Carlos Javier Ortiz’s Photographs Invite Viewers to Be Participants in Social Justice Advocacy

Through his humanistic approach to photography and film, Carlos Javier Ortiz immerses us in dramatic protests, emotional ceremonies, and historical events that mark our current moment.

The Chicago-based photographer and filmmaker was born in Puerto Rico and makes work that critically examines life in urban centers, often through the lens of personal narrative. His practice is guided by a dedication to social justice and human rights, telling visual stories that help viewers comprehend current events and issues through both still and moving images.

Ortiz’s solo exhibition, Inherit America, opens at Riverside Arts Center this month. Curated by Laura Husar Garcia, the bold selection of images chronicles political activism and community portraits that shed light on everyday people’s fights for justice and equity.

“What makes Ortiz’s work so necessary is its resistance to spectacle,” Garcia says in a statement, continuing:

He does not chase moments of crisis. He stays. He returns. He photographs the waiting, the recovery, the daily life that continues regardless of headlines. That is where his strength lies—in showing us not just the event, but the system around it.

Inherit America highlights Ortiz’s art in its dual form as advocacy, sharing perspectives and stories that we don’t often see from large-scale, legacy media outlets. He builds trust with the individuals and communities he works alongside, recording the intensity of nighttime demonstrations, the inherent beauty of cooperation, or the quietude and reflection that follows major events.

Ortiz turns his lens to people, gatherings, and locations that reflect historically marginalized communities and people of color. We see derelict, abandoned grocery stores in urban “food deserts,” where underserved residents have access to fast food but no easy access to fresh produce or healthy food options. And he shows us momentous inflection points in recent history, like protests in St. Louis against Michael Brown’s death at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson. Ortiz captures the moment 24 hours before Wilson’s acquittal by a grand jury, which spurred rioting.

“In an era when representation is so easily manipulated, Inherit America models a different kind of authorship—one that is reciprocal, ethical, and rooted in place,” Garcia says. “It asks viewers not just to look, but to stay in the tension. To wrestle with what it means to belong to a country still defining itself. This exhibition is not simply about the America we see. It’s about the American we participate in shaping.”

Inherit America opens on September 14 and continues through October 18 in Riverside—just about 25 minutes east of the Chicago Loop. Explore more on Ortiz’s website.

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Watch a Timelapse of the Notorious Kowloon Walled City Built to Scale in Minecraft

Kowloon Walled City, considered the densest settlement on the planet, was demolished in the mid-1990s. At its height in the ’80s, it was home to around 33,000 people—a government survey provided some idea of the local population—but estimates are often closer to 50,000. And that’s all within an overall footprint of 2.6 hectares, or just shy of about 6.5 acres. It’s an area smaller than five American football fields or about 2.5 New York City blocks.

A bit of an infrastructural and legal accident, Kowloon Walled City started as a Song Dynasty military outpost, then became a Qing dynasty fort in 1810. It sat within the boundaries of Kowloon City, Hong Kong, which was eventually controlled by the British after 1842’s Treaty of Nanking. But the British never really did much with the location, and for decades, only a few hundred people lived there. In 1940, only a yamen—a central government office—a school, and a single house stood in what would eventually transform into a city of monumental and overbearing proportions.

Kowloon Walled City continues to fascinate us today, as nothing on its scale had existed before and will likely never again. For an architect who goes by Sluda Builds on YouTube, the astounding, densely packed metropolis spurred an elaborate Minecraft project. From the ground up, including a surprising landscape grade that often doesn’t read clearly in photographs, he meticulously reconstructs the city’s skyscrapers, mezzanines, interior passageways, rooftops, and alleys.

Many of the Walled City’s buildings were practically conjoined, with ad hoc doorways and halls interconnected so thoroughly that, supposedly, one could travel from one side of the city to the other without ever stepping outside. And what space did exist outside was limited to narrow passages just large enough for people to get by on foot.

While today’s architects and engineers probably bristle at the myriad contemporary code violations here, the city emerged because it fell into a bit of a legal gray area due to a kind of governance limbo. Restrictions came in the form of limited space.

The British didn’t have much involvement with the walled city, and then the Nationalist Chinese Government began declaring jurisdiction in the mid-20th century. Starting in 1945, refugees of the Chinese Civil War began flooding in, with at least 2,000 settling there by 1947. By 1950, that number had grown exponentially, as a fire in 1950 destroyed the homes of more than 17,000 residents. But the metropolis kept growing from there.

Sluda’s project highlights the structural complexity of Kowloon Walled City through the bright—and very tidy—medium of Minecraft. He was drawn to the idea because not only is the settlement notorious and historically fascinating, it also possesses a strange aesthetic allure that’s difficult to pin down. He wanted to explore why it has this effect.

“These are serious high-rise buildings, some of them reaching 14 stories tall, yet constructed from the ground up in a vernacular style that’s more common in human-scale neighborhoods like the ones in Rio, for example,” Sluda says. “The sheer amount of character and personality in just one building is enough to be unique and interesting, but side-by-side visually with 50 others, all unique as well—to me, this is a major part of why this city has become so iconic.”

Check out more Minecraft projects on Sluda Builds’ YouTube channel and Instagram. You might also enjoy photographs of the city captured by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze or Hitomi Terasawa’s now out-of-print illustrated guide, complete with elaborate cross-sections.

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‘Crafting Sanctuaries’ Sheds Light on Black Experience in the South During the Great Depression

Between 1935 and 1944, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) spurred a unique documentary project. The government outfit, organized as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, provided aid to rural families during the Great Depression. The global economic crisis spanned 1929 to 1939 and was compounded in North America by the Dust Bowl, a severe drought exacerbated by poor agricultural practices and strong winds. Many farmers and their families were forced to migrate as, in some cases, their livelihoods essentially blew away.

Roy E. Striker, head of the Information Division of the FSA, had the foresight to hire a group of renowned photographers to chronicle the realities of the living conditions in rural parts of the U.S. Throughout its 9-year run, the FSA tapped the likes of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks, John Vachon, and Carl Mydans, among other luminaries.

Initially, the project focused on documenting cash loans made to individual farmers as a visual record of the good money could do, along with suburban development initiatives. The second phase took a more ambitious approach by dispatching photographers to the rural South to focus on the lived experiences of sharecroppers, along with migratory laborers in the West and Midwest. Later, the project expanded to include rural and urban documentation and World War II.

Arguably, the most iconic image captured by a FSA photographer during this time is Dorothea Lange’s 1936 portrait, often referred to as “Migrant Mother,” which depicts a destitute pea-picking family in California. But the images that Stryker chose to eventually publish, selected from tens of thousands of negatives overall, focus on a relatively narrow view of life during this time, presenting the period as a predominantly white struggle.

For Art Bridges Foundation curatorial associate Tamir Williams, Ph.D., this omission presents a unique opportunity to highlight “how Black Southerners created spaces of resilience, refuge, and identity amid widespread economic hardship and systemic oppression.” Stunning black-and-white images transport us back to an era almost beyond imagining—if it weren’t for the extraordinary record of daily life captured through the eyes of Rothstein, Evans, Lee, and more.

In a collaboration between Art Bridges and Museum of Art + Light, a new exhibition titled Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Black Great
Depression South revolves around more than three dozen rarely seen images from the FSA archive that shed light on Black spaces during the Great Depression. Photos of homes, churches, schools, and barbershops demonstrate how “interior and public gathering spaces became canvases for self-determination and cultural preservation.”

The images in this exhibition focus on the American South, particularly the lives of sharecroppers. Tenant farmers who worked land belonging to someone else—to whom they paid rent in the form of crops instead of cash—were often bound up in a cycle of indebtedness, thanks to high interest rates and unfair contract terms that made it difficult to break even, let alone get ahead. Beholden to landowners, many sharecroppers experienced a system that essentially prolonged certain conditions of slavery.

From the shade of a Mississippi Delta porch to an Atlanta barber shop to hearths in plantation tenant homes, FSA photographers captured candid, tender, everyday scenes that highlight the living and working conditions of Black laborers in the 1930s and early 1940s.

The titles, often written in the form of descriptions, employ obsolete terminology yet afford glimpses of specific locations like Gees Bend, Atlanta, and elsewhere throughout the Deep South. Still forced to endure the practices of the Jim Crow era, Black people attended segregated churches, barber shops, and other businesses. Crafting Sanctuaries shines a light on these historically underrepresented places.

Crafting Sanctuaries is on view at the Museum of Art + Light in Manhattan, Kansas, through March 9, 2026, when it may tour. Plan your visit on the museum’s website. You also might enjoy the FSA photographers’ “killed negatives” or a deep dive into more than 170,000 FSA images in the archive of the Library of Congress.

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