Andrea Oppenheimer Dean

Founded by Samuel Mockbee in 1993, the Rural Studio is an architecture studio and educational program run by Alabama's Auburn University. It puts students to work building homes and community structures in the poor, rural areas of the state - predominantly Hale and Perry counties. Here the students meet and befriend community members, design buildings to meet the needs of the client, and balance the economic, aesthetic and environmental concerns of their projects.

The sub-title of Oppenheimer Dean's first title devoted to Rural Studio, Rural Studio Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency, captures the appeal of this program very neatly. There is an essential decency to the idea that the field of architecture does not exist solely for the benefit of the wealthy, that beauty does not belong to the privileged, and that, as Mockbee once expressed it, "Everyone, rich or poor, deserves a shelter for the soul."

This second volume devoted to Rural Studio focuses on the years after Mockbee's death in 2001, when the program struggled to find a balance between inevitable change and the need to carry on Mockbee's vision. The projects highlighted include a community ballpark, a pavilion and restrooms for a newly re-opened park (the only public recreation area in all of Perry County), and a highly idiosyncratic house built for the equally idiosyncratic (and charming) Music Man.

Proceed and Be Bold is a beautiful book, both visually and thematically, and a worthy follow-up to the first title. It left me with the comforting feeling that while so many of us seem determined to sink our efforts into projects that do little to benefit the common good, there are people who are confronting some of our social ills with creative solutions.… (altro)

Do you ever feel that while the world is rushing headlong toward destruction, a sizable portion of the people around you seem to be feverishly investing their resources and energy in projects that contribute nothing to the common good - almost as if determined to speed us all on our way? Do you ever wonder why some of that good old "American" ingenuity, that inventive creativity of which we are always hearing, can't be applied to solving some of the social and environmental ills that plague us, rather than serving to line someone's pockets?

I know I have. Every time I pass some glitzy new high-rise going up here in New York, with ads promising luxury living, I think of how desperately we need affordable housing. And every time I pass a public housing project, complete with row upon row of tiny windows, I am struck by the monotonous uniformity of the structures we inflict upon the poor. At such times, caught between the ugliness of wealth and the ugliness of poverty, I am almost in despair at the sheer stupid waste of it all.

It is at moments such as these that I most need to read about people like Samuel Mockbee, and his wonderful Rural Studio. An educational project begun in 1993, and run under the auspices of Auburn University, Rural Studio puts students to work building innovative and affordable homes for the rural poor of Hale County, Alabama - a locale many readers may know through Walker Evans and James Agee's celebrated book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Here the students learn about social responsibility, and the needs of the poor, while working in a cooperative, learn-as-you-build environment.

I'm not much of a modernist, in architecture or any other field, and my "dream-house" probably looks something like a Tudor, but I found many of the projects profiled in this book quite beautiful. They definitely embody Mockbee's idea of local culture and available materials shaping architectural form. The emphasis on responsiveness, to the needs of the client and the environment, gives this program real transformative potential. I was impressed by the fact that Mockbee and his students don't feel forced to choose between beauty and economy - that they reconcile these two concerns, all while designing structures that are environmentally sound.… (altro)