“Depicting the Sri Lankan Vernacular” comprises more than 500 images and originates from the research of Bonnie MacDougall ’62, M.A. ’65, Ph.D. ’73, professor emerita in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. MacDougall's work in Mimure, in the Knuckles mountains of Sri Lanka, spanned more than 50 years and her entire academic career. She died in November 2017.

Many of the photographs and drawings in this collection were previously published in MacDougall's book, “Sinhalese Domestic Life and Space and Time,” co-authored with her husband, Robert MacDougall, ’62, B.Arch. ’63, Ph.D. ’71, who died in 1987. Unlike other ethnographic studies of Sri Lanka, the MacDougalls described the relationship of the village to its architecture and material culture. The MacDougalls wrote not only for anthropologists but also for architects, planners and researchers interested in the cross-cultural study of dwellings.