Hale County, Alabama is a place full of architects, and often high-profile ones. The likes of Todd Williams and Billie Tsien have dared, as have Peter Gluck and Xavier Vendrell, all converge Rural Studio at Auburn University. Despite the influx of designers, it is a place where a set of all black mark you as an outsider. I learned during my year as student awareness there, and reminded me recently, when I ventured south of the 20th anniversary celebration of the Studio. While more recent graduates took the stage, I was watching the ceremony from the bed of a pickup truck, indulging in corn-coated, fried catfish, and reflected on what the organization stands for the world of architecture.
Since its founding in 1993 by DK Ruth and Samuel Mockbee, the Studio has built more than 150 projects and trained more than 0 students. These early years evoke images tires stacked coated concrete and windshield cars pinned like shingles on a modest chapel. Over the past two decades, the leadership went from Mockbee and Ruth to the current director, Andrew Freear, and the palette has evolved to provide more conventional materials, but the studio remains true to its founding principal: all people deserve good design. Now that he is officially twenty-something, that may Rural Studio teach us about good design?
Contemporary architecture tends to end where imagination becomes the touch. Ideas are handed off a tidy game sheets to build the next runner in the relay race. As a design-build, Rural Studio is an alternative to this approach; the same hands that draw the plans are those who build the formwork and pour concrete. What really sets the studio, however, allowing it to be heard in the growing tumult of global design rapidly changing is its commitment to a place of architecture. Unlike the highly brand architecture that is often exported from one continent to another, each project is geographically context. It has not made for mass production or assembled from homogeneous materials worldwide. It can not be packaged and transplanted into another region. This localization of the effort may seem archaic, but as Mimi Zeiger recently noted, "engagement with real, local conditions is crucial to the overall relevance of architecture."
Hale County is located in the black belt of Alabama, a region named for its dark soil. local conditions are largely characterized by the latest wave of the cotton industry, which devastated the ground once fertile . and left a washing poverty and farms catfish background clay in his wake studio develops architectural details specifically for the climate: the foundations are structured to support the screens moving, rich soil clay, rain and cedar provide a solution to naturally reduce moisture. Rather than trying to teach the vernacular how to behave, students learn about him, the implementation of cross ventilation and deep eaves to provide shaded relief from the sweltering heat.
design The media tends to glorify the decision Mockbee to plant the seeds of earthen organization in rural areas and tend to them constantly, but it is important to note that it was created on an exchange system from the start. He donated a building, and beneficiaries agree to be part of an experience, hosting inexperienced students as they run around the yard on a backhoe.
Mockbee Hale County selected because it provided the right conditions for the creation of a symbiotic relationship between architecture students who need education and people who need buildings. He recognized the importance of understanding and invest in a place, realizing that the entrance and the invitation of the poor would be crucial to the success of the studio. There is much emphasis on 'design for good "in the world of architecture, but the" design for good "may not respond as good design. The latter brings people it designs for customers rather than charity cases, focusing on their desires and take responsibility for the end result. As mentioned in this article by Michael Kimmelman, cooking creative solutions for the poor is most successful when their ideas are part of the recipe. While Mockbee first worked to find loans for project beneficiaries, the community is now approaching the studio, corroborating the theory that it often takes a commitment to a place to gain acceptance of his people.
Initially, the 150 miles separating rural studio the main campus of Auburn University supplied a code buffer constraints and tight deadlines more established cities and expensive. There was little danger of an inspector trekking in a dirt road to check the structural details of walls stacked carpet tiles were in code. As its roots have grown and gained traction, the Studio has received more attention from all sides. traditional building materials have become available through donations and experiences began to solidify. The project sites radius extended as far as 25 miles from the main campus Studio. Editor Freear, the focus was community centers and parks designed to serve large groups of people. The 20K House project was developed to create affordable housing that matches the local vernacular, optimizing limited resources to shelter more people living on a very limited income.
Despite growing, the Studio has not abandoned its investment in place. Instead, he himself grounded more firmly in collaboration with municipal officials and school boards to discuss the ambitions of the project, planning and financing. While working with customers as local scouts and the Boys & Girls Club, rural studio teams attended Scout meetings and tutoring local students after school. Other institutions, typical missions studio may omit pesky political forces and fly over the complex issues of class and race, but these are historical and present part of life in Hale County, as in the world. Theories of political space and are not based on the resources available in the university library (which is, of course, hundreds of miles from the studio). Instead, projects function as a collective case study, research continues even after construction is complete.
The approach is certainly slow, it is, and iterative process requiring considered. Trace Sheets of paper are pinned to the walls, drawn on, demolished and replaced. This operation is repeated, sometimes to the point of trouble even if the detail in question is the junction of a column composed of 2x6 and a layer of pine decking. Some students stay for a year or two after getting officially, often to complete major community projects.
Naturally, Rural Studio's efforts are not without fault. Freear Auburn and teachers are constantly evaluating what should be built rather than press ahead with what may. As a result, some teams never see their projects, and these are folded into the search experience ongoing. Among those that the transition from two to three dimensions, some end up underutilized or impeded by an imperfect detail. Twice a year, each student takes a week to beautify existing projects, fixing a leaky roof at the fire brigade Newbern or pull weeds in the Lions Park.
Sometimes Hale County residents see the work built as foreign to the region that students expect. Remaining present and involved in the place she built, the Studio is able to reflect on the past work for each project benefits from those before it. "Some of our work has been successful, others less so. Because we live here if we screw up, we hear about it," says Freear in the latest Book Studio. The world of architecture in general tend to view final photo shoot of a building's highest point, before the purity of architecture is disrupted by years of use. No one in the Rural Studio claim ignorance of the power of images- it benefited from the photographic prowess Timothy Hursley for several years-but the emphasis is on how the projects achieve over time, not for their sessions pictures.
Rural Studio could be just a small town twenty-something, but offers a unique approach that all architects can learn . His ability to focus and redirect, adapt to new directors and constraints, shows that programs can change, education must be self-conscious and deliberate, and education should not be limited to nights late in the studio and early morning in the conference room. He reminds us that the work of the privileged to help the poor should be a mutual exchange of ideas and input, and the architecture of the place is still a worthy pursuit in a world increasingly globalized.
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Rennie Jones is an architect by day and a writer in the morning -. T article was originally published on his blog She hopes to complete her first novel this summer, provided the vast offers of New York City do not get in the way.
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