Ria and Tom Shibayama Sibley

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The Interwar Modern Architecture Project

For the past 4 years, Ria Shibayama and Tom Sibley have been researching and photographing The Interwar Modern Architecture Project. In the course of researching and shooting thousands of structures of all types, we’ve enjoyed grouping the resultant images using various organizing principles. For this proposal, we’ve included relatively uncelebrated, utilitarian structures seen in the context of their everyday use. To locals, these buildings are ordinary and commonplace. We want to share that sensibility as observed in cultures across the global landscape.

The Interwar Modern Architecture Project is a multi-year, global documentary photography project presenting a wide variety of architectural typologies primarily designed and built in the “modernist” period - specifically, between the two world wars, 1914-1945. We also photograph structures built in other times that reflect aesthetic directions developed during the interwar period. We are fascinated by the continuing existence of these structures, how the present use converses with original purpose and the current physical dispositions of the structures - whether they are renovated to original specifications, still-in-use-but-unmaintained, or in totally ruinous states. As the centennial of many buildings approaches, we strive to increase public awareness of the importance of the period and the imperative need for protection from destruction.

We research our targets in a sprawling fashion, combing through archives and forums, but we also frequently discover exciting subjects while in the field. As a result, we’ve created a very large photographic record of prominent, widely-recognized structures in addition to almost-entirely-forgotten designs where the date, the architect or any other data are often not retrievable. In addition to photographing examples of architecture and engineering from the tightly-focused interwar time frame, we also enjoy following throughlines into other eras by way of direct quotations or broad references from earlier works. These buildings, adjacent to our direct mission, have a place in the narrative, too. Furthermore, our global approach has revealed a multitude of fascinating local variations on themes seen everywhere.

Our photography has developed and evolved while shooting this project. We typically use a 15 feet stand for camera support. This elevated perspective feels simultaneously intimate and detached. It captures the subject's finer architectural details while exalting it as an object-artifact. Removed from everyday street-level perspective, the observer is brought closer to the building’s center or higher - a view well known to designers but rarely seen by anyone else.