2006 RAIA National Conference

Rural Studio was founded by Samuel Mockbee and Dennis K. Ruth in 1993 within Auburn University’s School of Architecture as a hands-on architecture programme. They believed that "everyone, rich or poor, deserves a shelter for the soul". Rural Studio simultaneously addresses the issues of architectural teaching, social conscience, and building with limited means while improving the living conditions of one of the poorest communities in the United States - Hale County, Alabama.

The focus of the student’s thesis year is a community-based project and sustainable materials research. Working in small teams, the students experience the Arts & Crafts hands-on building tradition, working directly with the community, and having the added dilemma of negotiating designs and procedures with their team mates. Typically in teams of three or four, the students conceive the project and program, raise funds, write grants, make community presentations, and design and build the projects from foundation to roof. Projects have ranged from baseball fields, community centres to a house made of cardboard.

Samuel Mockbee was awarded the American Institute of Architect’s Gold Medal posthumously in 2004 for his work with Rural Studio. After Samuel’s death from leukaemia in 2001, Andrew Freear became director, and has continued and expanded upon the original programme. Rural Studio may well be pointing a way towards a future for architectural education and the creation of socially conscious buildings, and Andrew Freear will come to show some of Rural Studio’s very successful work. Perhaps even more importantly, he will tell us how the philosophy and practice of Rural Studio has affected the lives of the faculty, students, families and communities involved in the programme.