In general, the FSA favored modular, functionalist design, reflected in the work of some of its most well-known staff, such as landscape architect Garret Eckbo, architect Vernon de Mars and civil engineer Nicholas Cirino. FSA camps attracted notice from modern architecture circles, including the influential architectural journal Pencil Points , which devoted an entire issue in 1942 to the camps. Most camp buildings were wood frame clad either in canvas, wood or metal. In some regions, architects made attempts at vernacular design adaptations. Camp Osceola in Florida, for example, featured small porches and low-angle gables on stilt-raised residential buildings not unlike local houses, while community facility buildings in Texas and California were often open to the air; camps in Arizona used adobe for wall construction. But most camps rose up according to a set of centralised codes and specifications meant to accelerate the process of construction and multiply the number of sites in the pipeline. This centralisation of design led to such follies as tin roofs in Texas and metal cladding in Florida, forcing residents out of their units in the long summers. As federal architects and civil engineers sited, planned and constructed the camps, the Head of the FSA Information Division, Roy Stryker, dispatched twenty- two photographers throughout the country to document the effort. He employed many of the top photographers in the United States, including Dorthea Lang, Jack Delano, Gordon Parks, Ben Shahn, Marion Post Wolcott,Walker Evans,Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee and Marjory Collins. He supplied his photographers with ‘scripts’ describing the range of subjects and treatments deemed appropriate to the purpose. These photographers left a detailed visual record of the camps, with tens of thousands of unique images.
Sinton,Texas. Arthur Rothstein, 1942. In the early 1940s, with more concentrated design talent and less oversight from Washington, FSA officials grew bolder in their deployment of High Modern architecture. The residential structure at FSA Camp Sinton pictured above could have come from the drawing board of the Bauhaus.
Harlingen,Texas. Arthur Rothstein, 1942. Most camps had one or more facilities related to children, including day care centres, playgrounds, story readings and kindergartens. Rothstein’s photograph emphasises the rational application of simple, modern, unadorned mass construction techniques.
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Westley, California. Dorothea Lange, 1939. One of the early and largest of the FSA caps,Westley housed up to 200 families and as many individual travellers at a time. It functioned as a small town, with its own water tower, plumbing and electric grids. Architects made a nod toward the California vernacular with the overhanging porch.
Westley, California. Dorothea Lange, 1939. The elegant pole and rafter outbuilding, open to the warm Texas air, houses the communal laundry facility beneath a corrugated metal roof. Arrayed in the background is a regiment of prefabricated modular houses for families.
all photographs courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington
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