Build More, Design Less

During this weeks discussion I was very intrigued by the work of Samuel Mockbee and how he has been so successful in designing for under privileged communities, in a very rural Hale county of Alabama. I ask myself, why is this not a more common practice in education? Some of my first thoughts to that question are that maybe we just don't have the education for it, maybe people don't understand how to apply this method to education, maybe architects don't have the time to build cause their always designing, etc. I don't know the answer, nor do I think that if I did know the answer that it could be an accurate answer across the board for every situation. I think that there are a mixture of reasons why architecture students are not getting hands on and building. But the primary thing is that we are seeing  it become more common. It is such an important element of design to be able to get hands on with the design and understand how parts and pieces are really going together. The more interesting part of the process that Mockbee has implemented is the use of recycled materials. These materials are considered to be "unusable" or "undesirable" but when given the proper attention and design initiative they become beautiful aesthetics to the overall product.