Rural Studio

Using salvaged lumber and bricks, discarded tires, hay and waste cardboard bales, concrete rubble, colored bottles, and old license plates, they create inexpensive buildings in a style Mockbee describes as "contemporary modernism grounded in Southern culture."".

For two decades the students of Auburn University's Rural Studio have designed and built remarkable houses and community buildings for impoverished residents of Alabama's Hale County, one of the poorest in the nation. Our critically acclaimed bestseller Rural Studio (2002) showed how salvaged lumber, bricks, discarded tires, hay-and-waste cardboard bales, concrete rubble, colored bottles, carpet tiles, and old license plates were transformed into inexpensive buildings that were also models of sustainable architecture. Rural Studio at Twenty chronicles the evolution of the legendary program, founded by (MacArthur Genius Grant and AIA Gold Medal winner) Samuel Mockbee, and showcases an impressive portfolio of projects. Part monograph, part handbook, and part manifesto, Rural Studio at Twenty is a must-read for any architect, community advocate, professor, or student as a model for engaging place through design.

In 1992, Samuel Mockbee launched the Rural Studio to create homes and community buildings for the poor while offering hands-on architecture training for coming generations. This new book explains the changes the studio has undergone since his death.176 pp.

The architect and teacher Samuel Mockbee, founder of Auburn University's Rural Studio, was an idealist who put into action one of the boldest programs in contemporary architecture. Mockbee led his students in the design and construction of homes, community centers and other essential structures in Hale County, Alabama--one of the poorest counties in the United States. Mockbee believed that architecture could play a determining role in combating the brutalities of poverty. He inspired students to create vanguard designs and utilize an array of innovative, cost-effective building materials that included scraps of carpet baled into rectangular building blocks. This combination of ingenuity and enterprise informed the unique character of Mockbee's undertaking. "Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio" appraises Mockbee's unique contribution, assessing how he believed that architecture, practiced as a community-oriented undertaking, could transform the social environment.

"On the occasion of its 150th anniversary, the American Institute of Architects asked more than 70 contributors to examine the complex and evolving of the America's architects in shaping our cities and communities. Through essays, vignettes, and profiles, illustrated with more than 560 photographs, Architecture provides a look at the breath and depth of the architecture profession and points to the significant contributions architects have made in all aspects of society. Most important, the book demonstrates the value of applying "architectural thinking" to the many serious issues - from global warming and homeland security to accessibility and diversity - facing our world today."--BOOK JACKET.

The work of Samuel Mockbee and Coleman Coker "offers many lessons for projects of all scales and locations. It is an architecture that both celebrates and transcends its regional influences". -- Progressive Architecture

The current trend for constructing experimental structures is now an international phenomenon. It has been taken up worldwide by design professionals, researchers, educators and students alike. There exist, however, distinct and significant tendencies within this development that require further investigation. This issue of AD takes on this task by examining one of the most promising trajectories in this area, the rise of intensely local architectures. In his seminal essay of 1983, Kenneth Frampton redefined Critical Regionalism by calling for an intensely local approach to architectural design. Today, Frampton’s legacy is regaining relevance for a specific body of work in practice and education focused on the construction of experimental structures. Could this ultimately provide the seeds for a compelling and alternative approach to sustainable design? Contributors include: Barbara Ascher, Peter Buchanan, Karl Otto Ellefsen, David Jolly Monge, Lisbet Harboe, David Leatherbarrow, Areti Markopoulou, Philip Nobel, Rodrigo Rubio, Søren S Sørensen, Defne Sunguroðlu Hensel. Featured practices: Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Rintala Eggertsson, SHoP, Studio Mumbai, TYIN tegnestue.

Architecture should be the ideal field of study for applying to service learning since it requires mastery of theoretical concepts for direct application to human situations and needs. Though architecture has long fostered learning by doing, it is only recently that the field’s hands-on aspects have been subjected to more systematic appraisal. This book is the first book to make a formal connection between service learning pedagogy and architectural practice, and to address the related issues, both professional and ethical.This book looks equally at the emergence in the sixties of planning departments out of schools of architecture, and at planning’s shift in orientation away from “master planning,” elite designers, and signature buildings to the mainstream acceptance of neighborhood-based planning and socially engaged practice. This turn has led to far more widespread adoption of service learning in planning programs.The chapters in this book illustrate how service learning can be used to develop a wide range of professional skills in students, including land use and building condition surveys, zoning analysis, demographic analysis, cost estimating, public presentation, site planning, urban design, participatory design processes, public workshops, and design charrettes as well as measured drawings of existing buildings.The author demonstrates how community design programs are more than service activities; and how they can be models of interdisciplinary teamwork, often involving planners, urban designers, and landscape architects as well as scholars and researchers from related fields.The essays in this book offer insights into both successful initiatives and roadblocks along the way and address the practicalities of the use of this powerful pedagogy.