COMMUNITY CARE.

The final project in this Rural Studio series is a community centre for a rural hamlet that inventively uses scavenged materials to create both a social and physical focus.

Lying in Hale County, deep in the Alabama old cotton belt, Masons Bend is a tiny hamlet tucked into a bend of the Black Warrior river. Home to four extended families, it epitomizes the shaming and disregarded depths of rural deprivation in the American South. Most of the 150 inhabitants live in decaying trailers or very basic houses, and there are no indigenous community facilities. A grant of $20 000 was obtained from the Potero Nuevo Fund in San Francisco to build a simple structure that could function variously as a place for recreation, childcare, worship and meetings, as well as providing the community with a physical and social focus. Designed and built by a team of fifth year students at Auburn University's Rural Studio, the new building is a bold, vigorous and optimistic presence that attempts to mitigate the grim, grinding impoverishment of its surroundings.

The site lies at the centre of the hamlet, where the property lines of the three founding families meet. Through intense discussions with the community, the students evolved a programme for the building. Gaining trust and fostering a sense of mutual respect was, as in all Rural Studio projects, a crucial aspect of the design development. The outcome is a boldly sculptural pavilion that frames views of the landscape and provides an intimate communal gathering place. Part barn, part church, the building is a hybrid of simple rural typologies, reinterpreted in a contemporary manner. Terracotta-coloured walls made of rammed earth (a mixture of local earth, cement and polymer preservative compressed into timber formwork) extend to enclose small gardens, pulling nature into the building and funnelling people into the navelike central space. A laminated timber frame supports the angular roof which is made partly of aluminium and partly of toughened glass panels lapped like fish scales to admit light to the surprisi ngly lofty and dignified interior. Robust cypress benches and a gravel floor are the sole furnishings.

Because of the extremely extemporized nature of the project, there were no conventional architectural drawings. However the student designers were intimately involved with sourcing cheap materials and the process of construction. Students cut down cypress trees and milled them into planks to make the laminated beams. A local firm donated scrap metal for the tubular steel members which were sanded to remove rust and painted black. The roof's delicate glass scales are actually car side windows, scavenged by one of the students from a lot in his native Chicago. This capacity for inventive recycling reflects the ethos of the community, celebrating the transcending power of architecture and the human spirit.

Architect

Rural Studio, Auburn, USA

Project team

Adam Gerndt, Forrest Fulton, Dale Rush,

Jon Schumann, Bryan Bell

Photographs

Timothy Hursley

1. The community centre is an angular pavilion in the landscape.

2. Rammed earth walls extend to enclose small external courtyards, which will be planted over time.

3. The building in its context. Most of the Masons Bend inhabitants live in trailers or very basic houses. Until the centre was built, there were no on-site community facilities.

4. Glass roof is made of car side windows, scavenged by the student designers.

5. Interior has an austere dignity.

6. The building can be used for a range of social functions -- meetings, childcare, worship -- and also forms a physical focus for the community.