RURAL MISSION.

In America's Deep South, Sam Mockbee and his students strive to make decent architecture for an impoverished rural constituency with the bare minimum of resources.

The Rural Studio at Auburn University's College of Architecture, Design and Construction was founded in 1992 by architect and professor Sam Mockbee, with the aim of extending the study of architecture into a socially responsible context. Every quarter, groups of students elect to live and work off campus in the impoverished "Black Belt' of western Alabama (so called because of its fertile soil).

Working with local agencies, they design and build houses and other small--scale projects for the mostly destitute citizens of Hale County. Although a remote backwater of Alabama, Hale County is not unknown to the outside world; in 1936 writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans spent six weeks living with the families of three white tenant farmers in Hale County. Their memorable record of a subsistence existence which seemed unimaginably far removed from the thrusting material and social progressiveness of twentieth-century American life was eventually published in 1941 as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

Over half a century on, not a great deal has changed. Statistics from 1997 estimate that a third of the region's residents live below the poverty level, with a per capita income of just over $12 000. More than a quarter of the population is currently receiving food stamps and unemployment is at 13 per cent, double the Alabama average.

The Rural Studio's exemplary, evangelizing and unusual body of work challenges received wisdom concerning the practice of architecture. Its chief missionary is Sam Mockbee; raised in segregated Mississippi, he has become painfully aware of the acute moral, social and political contradictions of Southern life and has constantly striven to challenge and change things, through raising grants, initiating architectural and art projects, as well as teaching, writing and proselytizing. For Mockbee, architecture is a humanly sustaining social art, rooted to place and community. 'If we are to broaden our view', he notes 'we must first indelibly see something. Physical poverty is not an abstraction, but almost never do we think of impoverishment as evidence of a world which exists. Much less do we imagine that it's a condition from which we may draw enlightenment in a practical way."

The American South is a land apart, with a historical legacy bolstered by social and cultural traditions. These still obtain, and the contradictions they generate often make Southern life difficult to comprehend. While Civil Rights laws enshrine the notion of equality, large sections of the rural poor are passed over in matters of social and economic parity. Meanwhile, cities expand and implode, through dreary strip and edge developments. Through such paradoxes Mockbee and his students derive the basis for their architecture. Dedication to fundamental issues of social responsibility and stewardship of land are weighed against more pressing short-term concerns of aesthetics and profit.

Under Mockbee's direction and in consultation with local residents, students produce architecture that challenges convention in terms of methods, materials, and forms. They scavenge and incorporate discarded objects such as tyres, scrap timber, bottles and even car windows and number plates. The result is an architecture that combines vernacular archetypes with more adventurous form making, grounded by a strong sense of place.

The three projects shown in this issue (Rural Studio Housing, HERO Children's Centre and Masons Bend Community Centre) all emerge from this questioning and radical sensibility. [2] When based in the field, the Rural Studio now operates from a combined living and workspace in Newbern, western Alabama, designed and built by the students. It takes the form of a series of small pods containing living and working quarters (shared by groups of students), linked by a linear arcade that serves as an outdoor room in Alabama's hot, humid climate. The preoccupation with inventive use of materials, economy and connection with place are all apparent; these rural evangelists practise what they preach.

1. Mockbee Coker: Thought and Process, editor Lori Ryker, New York, Princeton Architectura Press, P 100.

2. The highly improvised and informal nature of their creation also means that conventional architectural drawings are not always available for publication, as has been the case here.

Architect

Rural Studio, Auburn, USA

Photographs

Timothy Hursley

1. Designed and built by the students, the Rural Studio's field base in Newbern draws on vernacular archetypes.

2. The improvised building is a patchwork of materials.

3. The students' living and working pods are linked by a long arcade, which acts as a communal gathering place.

HOUSING AND STUDIOS, NEWBERN, ALABAMA, USA

ARCHITECT

RURAL STUDIO

4. The project has evolved accretionally over the last four to five years, and acts as an ongoing testbed for materials and forms of construction.

5. Inside a typical pod.

6. Scavenged car number plates add surprising texture.

7, 8. Pods reflect individual approaches to materials and provide an opportunity or experimentation.