An ironic take on the Case Study House Program–initiated in 1945 by Arts and Architecture magazine in an effort to develop low-priced single-family homes by architects such as Richard Neutra and Charles and Ray Eames–German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski’s Case Study Homes was shot at the Baseco compound, a squatter camp near the Port of Manila, which is home to an estimated 70,000 people. As Bialobrzeski was considering the series–startling images of provisional structures fashioned from slats, cardboard, corrugated metal and other cast-off materials and refuse–Lehman Brothers Bank collapsed and the media declared a global economic crisis. These recent events lend resonance to Bialobrzeski’s images, which recall the photographs of impoverished rural Americans commissioned by the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s. Conceived as a sketchbook for a larger project, the images evidence the human will to survive and a profound resourcefulness.