Word: ruralization
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Samuel Mockbee is eager to show off the buildings his Rural Studio has designed throughout Hale County, Ala. Driving his pickup truck, he barrels past catfish farms, abandoned barns and sleepy towns, pointing out houses and community structures along the way. Even the 100-degree temperature and nearly 100 percent humidity don't seem to slow him down. It is only when he reaches the hamlet of Mason's Bend and the home of Alberta Bryant that this bear of a man with a bushy graying beard slips into low gear and momentarily seems to surrender to the heat. Plopping...
...lived in a decrepit shack with openings large enough to allow animals to walk through. But Mockbee, 55, is not your average architect. A recent recipient of a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation and an architecture professor at nearby Auburn University, he is a man with a mission. Rural Studio finds people and communities in need of buildings and, using inexpensive and unusual materials, designs structures that are practical and affordable, but at the same time unconventionally beautiful...
...teaching at Auburn, he used what he had learned in Canton to develop the Rural Studio. Mockbee sees the studio, which is financed by the university and such philanthropic groups as the Alabama Power Foundation, as a way to train a new generation of students in his belief that "architecture is a social art. It has to function in an ethical, moral way to help people...
...Rural Studio has been dubbed Redneck Taliesin South and compared with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the apprentice architects in the studio have more design freedom than students at Frank Lloyd Wright's famed Taliesin studios. And unlike Habitat, which to date has built 100,000 affordable houses, the Rural Studio turns out only a few handcrafted homes, farmers' markets and community buildings each year...
...Rural Studio structures have transformed Hale County. Yet when Mockbee gazes across its undulating fields, he sees more work that needs to be done. "How deep can I take this? How far can we go?" he muses about his desire not only to try new experiments - like building with wax-impregnated cardboard - but also to further spread his ideas so that others might emulate them. "Most people say we are already on the edge," he says. "But I want to jump into the dark to see what happens and where we land. It won't be fatal. We are onto...