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SAMUEL MOCKBEE

If We Build It, They Will Live

WE HAVE TO CHALLENGE THE STATUS QUO TO ALLOW FOR A BETTER FUTURE.

—Samuel Mockbee

Samuel Mockbee had it made. He owned a successful architecture firm. Many of his designs won prestigious awards. He was taking on projects of an international scale. He had enough free time to paint and pursue other hobbies. But something bigger was calling him.

A fifth-generation Alabaman, he knew firsthand about the long-lingering problems of race and poverty in his state. And while many of us would shrug and say, “Well, it's certainly a crying shame, but what can I really do?” Mockbee took what he could do—design homes—and put it to use.

A professor at Auburn University, Mockbee not only wanted to put his money and his time where his heart was, but he wanted to make sure his first love—architecture—was being used for a noble purpose.

He started the Rural Studio to help his students understand what architecture was really about. He believed people should live in harmony with their environment. He believed architecture could address social values as well as technical and aesthetic values.

The idea for Rural Studio started in 1993, when Mockbee, frustrated by student projects that were built only to be torn down, had a bigger idea. Why not build walls in real homes where people could really use them? Why spend all this time coming up with designs that are only theoretical when we could spend the same amount of time designing things that are useful?

He and his students headed to Hale County, Alabama, one of the poorest counties in America, where a good 36 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Surely, they could use some unique housing ideas. What if we could build them homes and try our hand at innovative architecture at the same time? What if we could build these homes ourselves for people who could not otherwise afford them? What if we could offer them for free?

Needless to say, a person has to think out of the box to come up with an idea like that. And, in fact, Mockbee and his students have completely torn open the envelope on what's possible in building homes. Rather than follow old forms that say, “Homes are made of wood, brick, or stone,” they came up with innovative designs that used offbeat building materials, such as old tires, hay bales, bottles, and even cast-off license plates.

Suddenly, people who had lived in substandard housing their entire lives had not only warm, safe homes, but homes that Mockbee likes to call “warm, safe homes with spirit.” A home, Mockbee says, should be a shelter for the soul as well as the body.

His students do all the work themselves—from the design to the pounding of nails. They literally live for an entire semester in this impoverished county that's an hour from the closest movie theater.

Mockbee says Rural Studio is a far cry from normal college life, where you attend classes with fellow students a couple times a week. At Rural Studio, they live together, cook together, eat together, and create wonderful homes together. The studio is a converted 1890s farmhouse.

Over the years, Mockbee's students have built chapels, basketball courts, and several homes, including a wonderful 850-square-foot home from hay bales. Alberta and Shepard Bryant, proud owners of this new home, were living with three grandkids in a leaky shack with no plumbing until Mockbee and his students showed up.

The students also built a backyard smokehouse out of broken concrete curbing and multicolored glass. Ringing in at a mere $20, the smokehouse where Shepard smokes fish is beautiful, with light coming through the colorful glass. As Mockbee says, “We take something that is very ordinary and make it extraordinary.”

His goal? “I want to jump into the dark and see where I land.” It is the only way.