Case Study: Rural Studio at Auburn University
Beginning in the late 1960s, architecture schools, led by Yale, Pratt, and Carnegie Mellon, created scores of community design centers (CDCs) in low-income neighborhoods across the country. Broadly speaking, CDCs carved out distinctive roles, for example helping residents of poor and working class communities to have a greater say in urban planning, zoning, and land use. More recently, a new generation of architects has sought to establish a firmer link between good design and community service through design/build, in which designers are involved from conception through construction. “Design/build projects are great because students can gain sought-after construction experience while addressing real community needs,” explains John Cary, executive director of Public Architecture, a nonprofit architecture firm that is also seeking to build formal structure for pro bono work among architects. “However, design/build doesn’t necessarily imply or guarantee a social thrust.”
One place where design/build has fulfilled its social promise has been at Auburn University’s Rural Studio. Co-founded in 1993 by Samuel Mockbee, a high-end residential architect who had grown disenchanted with his usual clients, the Rural Studio designs and builds houses and civic facilities for residents of the surrounding communities. Through Rural Studio, 15-20 second-year students move to Hale County, where they design and build a charity home over the course of a semester. Under the Thesis Program, a dozen students spend their fifth year of school designing and building community projects throughout Hale County.
Although Mockbee passed away in 2001, the Rural Studio remains a vibrant fusion of the pro bono ethos and architecture education. Says Cary, “The Rural Studio lives on and is arguably stronger than ever—better design, more complex projects, and so on. But the strange thing is that very few other architecture schools have attempted a similar program in terms of scale, longevity, etc.”
About the Rural Studio
The mission of the Rural Studio is to enable each participating student to cross the threshold of misconceived opinions to create/design/build and to allow students to put their educational values to work as citizens of a community. The Rural Studio seeks solutions to the needs of the community within the community’s own context, not from outside it. Abstract ideas based upon knowledge and study are transformed into workable solutions forged by real human contact, personal realization, and a gained appreciation for the culture.
About Auburn University
Auburn University is a public research university located in Auburn, Alabama. It has developed into one of the largest universities in the South, remaining in the educational forefront with an emphasis on a blend of arts and applied sciences.
