One cannot say enough about Sam Mockbee. Mockbee, who founded the Rural Studio while teaching at Auburn in 1993, a year-long studio where students would meet low-income clients, and then design and construct homes for them on budgets that rivaled what some Manhattan apartments cost for a month. The transformative impact of their work, for both clients and anyone who is inspired to think that design and creative labor can improve lives without outscaled investement, can not be understated.
While a student, I had the good fortune to meet Sam. A friend and I hijacked him during a lecture visit and took him to dinner. I’ve met only a limited number of luminaries in the architecture world, and seen a larger number speak. Mockbee stood out for years in my mind as the kindest person I’ve ever met who called architecture a passion. And his life, as he presented it, was a continual challenge to my own frustrations (at one point, we was living in his office because he couldn’t afford an apartment). That he continued to find ways to bring meaning and a better quality of life to more people as he continued to grow his practice is humbling, proof that carping only the rich can afford to buy or practice architecture is sometimes simply self-serving rationalization.
If you are anywhere near Washington DC over the summer, the National Building Museum is featuring a show (through September 6th) on the work of the Rural Studio. It is beautiful, and not simply because of the quiet grace of the intentions of the program’s social goals, but also because the of rigor with which the practioners engaged the belief that a client is deserving of the highest order of design, regardless of means. The Architect’s Newspaper (print only), offers a review in their current issue.
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Sambo.
One cannot say enough about Sam Mockbee. Mockbee, who founded the Rural Studio while teaching at Auburn in 1993, a year-long studio where students would meet low-income clients, and then design and construct homes for them on budgets that rivaled what some Manhattan apartments cost for a month. The transformative impact of their work, for both clients and anyone who is inspired to think that design and creative labor can improve lives without outscaled investement, can not be understated.
While a student, I had the good fortune to meet Sam. A friend and I hijacked him during a lecture visit and took him to dinner. I’ve met only a limited number of luminaries in the architecture world, and seen a larger number speak. Mockbee stood out for years in my mind as the kindest person I’ve ever met who called architecture a passion. And his life, as he presented it, was a continual challenge to my own frustrations (at one point, we was living in his office because he couldn’t afford an apartment). That he continued to find ways to bring meaning and a better quality of life to more people as he continued to grow his practice is humbling, proof that carping only the rich can afford to buy or practice architecture is sometimes simply self-serving rationalization.
If you are anywhere near Washington DC over the summer, the National Building Museum is featuring a show (through September 6th) on the work of the Rural Studio. It is beautiful, and not simply because of the quiet grace of the intentions of the program’s social goals, but also because the of rigor with which the practioners engaged the belief that a client is deserving of the highest order of design, regardless of means. The Architect’s Newspaper (print only), offers a review in their current issue.