(Not just) a skin-deep image problem?

This provocation asks, in this age of image saturation: how can we represent people in our architectural designs that are specific, appropriate, representative and diverse? Using Kimberlé Crenshaw’s notion of intersectionality, the paper explores the potential of an ‘image equality archive’ created in The University of Sheffield's School of Architecture, to act as an interactive resource for students to question, examine and evaluate the representation of peoples in their design projects. The paper explores the minefields that reside in architectural representation of human figures due to colonial structures that remain untouched. The archive then is proposed as a tool to open conversations around these structures that tend to make figures at categorical intersections invisible. Finally the paper ends with future uses of the archive and a speculative institutional framework that could grow around it in order to ensure that conversations remain open and sustainable in terms of its capacity to make structural changes within the architectural pedagogy of design projects across the school.