I do not want to work in Rural America.

I think that it is great how the Rural Studio addresses poverty within our own country, but I’m not interested in doing that with my career.

Instead I find it more beneficial to study scarcity and its role as the key player and vehicle for our current era of design. (And also as a way to discuss design without potentially categorizing design for poverty as low-income or low-cost.)

In scarcity we find quintessence. The art of storytelling with only the bare essentials becomes a question of scale. Just as an overall diagram omits detail, real life design should communicate at each scale such that the main idea is successfully read. This is not to say that a design is ‘without’’ or ‘inadequate’. Instead it is simply void of the unnecessary. Every detail should be integrated such that it adds to the narrative, not existing as a distraction or antagonist to the main characters at play.

In this mindset I believe we find that architecture has the ability to accomodate a large spectrum of clients. From wealthy hotels to humble cabins. Even though I don’t care to work in rural America, this common thread allows me to learn from the successes of the Rural Group.