Rural Studio is a program out of Auburn University in Alabama, head-quatered in Newburn. The program was started in 1993 by Samuel Mockbee as a way to teach architecture students the importance of being responsible to the environment and inhabitants that their work affects. The program achieves this goal by using the projects of the students to provide housing for the impoverished and depressed communities of Hale, Perry, and Marengo counties, especially in the Mason's Bend
community.
Samuel Mockbee died in 2001 but the program still builds about five projects a year. I am interested in visiting this site as a means to see a good example of balancing aesthetic innovation with social and environmental responsibility. Rural Studio buildings almost always utilize local and recycled materials and are focused on a specific, need-based community. I wish to learn from researching this ongoing frame of projects how a need can be recognized and innovatively and successfully nurtured. It is the natural evolution of my quest for wrestling with bringing my many, layered concepts into realities. I am also interested in Mockbee's ability to develop Rural Studio in a way that didn't end the it's progress with his death.
HERE is a link to an account of an adventure looking for Rural Studio projects.
It is a good example of how I can go about seeing some of these works. What is interesting is that high architecture is often gawked at and traveled to, but many of these works are just for the people they are built for, private spaces for a very specific audience. When visiting these sites I must be just as respectflul and responsible to these communities as the 'Studio was in making them.
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