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How does a studio create its identity? How does one carve a successful corner of an incredibly difficult field such as architecture and design? At Studio Barnes, we have always believed that successful architecture starts with a story. Not as a tool for subjugation but a catalyst for cultural exploration and expression. In contemporary times we are witnessing a revelation that architecture is often misunderstood as a purely formal, economic, or technical endeavor – an industry focused on materiality, real estate value, and health, safety, and welfare.
Yet, this reductive perspective fails to capture the full potency of architecture as a humanistic discipline. At its best and most successful output, architecture is an anthropological act: a mode of storytelling, a system of cultural production, and a practice of cultural expression. Architecture is not only a manifestation of physical space, but it has the potential to be a vessel of memory, narrative, and identity. Understanding the risk of sounding repetitive, given the current state of world affairs, architectural history and spatial practices have routinely centered dominant narratives.
The practitioners and structures that we celebrate have typically favored certain regions often overlooking the lived experiences and cultural contributions of underrepresented communities. With this approach as our consistent throughline, we attempt to utilize architecture as a storytelling device – one that can embed histories into the built environment, illuminate marginalized voices, and serve as a form of cultural archive.
In an increasingly globalized yet fractured world, there is an urgent need to revaluate who architecture serves, what narratives it upholds, and what it centers. This editorial explores how our studio’s anthropological approach to design, one that embraces architecture as a storytelling vehicle and interrogates the exchange between cultural representation, production, and preservation, provides a unique position to discuss and execute architecture.
To design anthropologically is to begin with people – not with abstract form, not with stylistic precedent, but with culture, behavior, and context. Historically, the community charrette is a typical methodology used to provide the façade of community engagement. Ethnographic procedures require a more deep and rich understanding of people and their legacies. It requires a removal of assumption and the ability to listen without interruption. It is to understand a community’s rituals, stories, values, and spatial relationships before ever laying a pencil to paper. But also recognizing that, in many cases, the language used to express these things may not translate. It is a delicate balance of architectural jargon and pure human decency. If the ability to communicate rests on one’s attainment of an architecture degree, this approach will be unsuccessful.
This process situates the architect as less of an autonomous auteur but as an ethnographer: one who studies and synthesizes the nuanced textures of everyday life into built form. Such an approach demands humility. It asks architects to forgo universalizing design languages in favor of deeply local, embedded, and co-created processes. It resists top-down imposition, forces a destratification of power and embraces reciprocal exchange.
There are many ways to achieve this archival catalogue of built work and many different types of projects that meet the criteria. Site-specific interventions and buildings, furniture and small-scaled objects, parks and playscapes – our studio works across multiple scales. Through community-led design processes, and culturally informed esthetics, architecture and design become a medium for reclaiming space and reframing public perception. A building that may lack ornamental significance as deemed by local historical preservation boards but still holds local reverence can memorialize silenced histories. A pavilion can amplify cultural heritage through iconography and color palettes, and a mural can amplify communal pride allowing visitors to see themselves in the work. This is because buildings do not merely contain stories – they are stories. They encode narratives of power, aspiration, exclusion, resilience, laughter, desperation, and care. Through material choice, spatial hierarchy, orientation, and ornamentation, buildings communicate values and identities. Architecture can be as legible as a novel, as symbolic as a painting, and as rhythmic as your favorite Saturday morning cleaning playlist.
Due to this ethos, we see design as a process of excavation and reimagination: what stories have been buried, erased, or silenced, and how can architecture make them visible again? Our work aims to translate the cultural patterns and histories of Black and Brown communities into spatial languages that honor their heritage while looking toward the future. We are particularly interested in the thresholds, porches, streets, and courtyards – those informal spaces where life happens but which are often overlooked by traditional architectural canons. These spaces, for us, are texts that can be read, rewritten, and celebrated. To many of the non-architects we collaborate with, these spaces are personal but ubiquitous and the novelty of their appearance can border on exploitative. This is where the sensitivity and knowledge of working with people moves to the forefront.
A critical framework that continues to guide our work is the relationship between cultural representation, cultural production, and cultural preservation. Representation asks, who gets to be seen and how? Production asks, who gets to create? Preservation asks, what is deemed worthy of saving? Too often, these questions are answered by institutions that do not reflect the communities they claim to serve.
In this light, cultural preservation is not about silence. It is about resilience. It is about designing spaces that adapt to contemporary life while remaining rooted in history. One of our key projects that illustrates this approach is Be Careful, I Always Am, an installation that reimagines the super graphic as a means of archiving difficult histories. Located in Chicago, Illinois, at the historic Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley House, a large-scale vinyl graphic adorns a scaffold system which surrounds the existing house. The story of the Tills is one that is forever etched in the annals of U.S. history, but many individuals remain unfamiliar. As the architects of record for its future conversion into a domestic museum, this temporary installation allowed us the freedom to celebrate important figures in a way that respects the legacy and horror of the event. It also provided a glimpse into what the future structure will be.
This commitment to underrepresented stories also informed our work at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023. As participants of Lesley Lokko’s curatorial direction of the “Laboratory of the Future” we presented Griot. Griot is a term that literally translates to “storyteller”, in West African lore. Being invited to exhibit at the landmark exhibition was a profound moment, not only personally but symbolically. It was an opportunity to bring narratives of the African diaspora into a global conversation, to show that architecture can center joy, identity, and community in ways that challenge traditional paradigms. At the center of our proposal was a singular, monumental column made of Spanish Marquina Marble. It told a story of migration, identity, and labor. In addition to the column were a series of drawings that spoke to the fractured history of North Africa in relation to classical architecture of Italy.
We believe strongly that underrepresented stories in architecture are not niche – they are foundational. This concerted effort to expand the canon is one that should be celebrated and embraced. Not shunned. They are essential to understanding the full spectrum of human experience. Yet they are often ignored or deemed peripheral. Why? Because they challenge dominant narratives. They ask us to reconsider what is “universal”, to dismantle the myth of neutrality in design, and to recognize that all architecture is political, all space is ideological. Global conflicts over space communicates that to disagree would be obtuse and ignorant.
In many ways, Studio Barnes’ work is about translating these spatial rituals into design languages that can be legible both locally and globally. We are not interested in being didactic. We want our spaces to provoke emotion, to generate connection, to offer new ways of seeing and being. This is especially important in a time when architecture must respond not only to climate crises but to social ones – gentrification, displacement, climate vulnerability.
Public installations and exhibitions like Ukhamba and Columnar Disorder have allowed us to scale our practice in ways that reach broader audiences. These projects use architectural elements – archways, woven structures, columns – not only as forms but as symbols. They reference classical architecture only to subvert it, using playful geometries and unexpected materials to reframe what these forms can mean. It is a way of reclaiming architectural language, of saying: we too belong in these dialogues.
The anthropological approach also means we do a lot of listening. We engage with community members, artists, elders, and youth. We conduct fieldwork, we gather oral histories, we map informal economies. All of this becomes part of the design process. The goal is not to impose, but to collaborate. Architecture, for us, is co-authored. A great example of this approach is in our project in service of Delray Beach’s West Settler district, a historically Black sundown town in South Florida. The client, a non-profit working in tandem with vulnerable populations, commissioned our studio to convert an existing home into a café as well as create a pavilion with mobile kiosks as many of the commercial businesses in the local community work informally. Our proposal was a set of custom kiosks that reference the ancestry of the Bahamians that built the community a century ago. They are colorful and whimsical and celebratory.
Why do we need more architecture that tells underrepresented stories? Because the built environment is a mirror of our values. When entire communities are left out of that reflection, it signals their marginalization. Inclusion in design is not just about who gets to build – it is about who gets to dream. Who gets to see themselves in the skyline? In the museum? In the plaza? If we want a more equitable society, we must build spaces that reflect its full diversity.
Moving forward, we are excited to continue expanding our practice globally while remaining grounded in local narratives. We want to keep experimenting with new materials, technologies, and collaborations. But most of all, we want to keep telling stories. We have often been asked what success looks like for Studio Barnes. For me, it is when someone walks into one of our installations and says, “This feels like home”. Or when a child sees a public artwork and says, “That looks like me”. It is in those moments that I know architecture has done its job – not just as shelter, but as story, as celebration, as legacy. Stories that have been overlooked, stories that are just emerging, stories that deserve to take up space. Because in the end, architecture is not just about buildings – it is about people. And everyone’s story deserves to be seen, heard, and built into the world.
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