Samuel Mockbee's Rural Studio: An Honest Fight

 

For those of us here who attended the Charles E. Daniel Center at the Villa in Genoa, Italy, we might think it odd that Samuel Mockbee found his inspiration for Auburn University’s Rural Studio there. While we were traipsing about Europe touring architectural marvels and tasting every gelato shop in Italy, Rural Studio’s students were living in an impoverished community, building with car tires and metal barrels. The similarities: a group of undergraduates all living under one roof in a community that they are unfamiliar with, forced to adapt to their environment and learn to create together. With the Villa, an adventure that will teach them about a culture and place that they will most likely never visit again; with the Rural Studio, an endeavor that teaches them empathy, respect, and service to a community in their own backyard.

This, to me, is the definition of Critical Regionalism: “I pay attention to my region,” says Samuel Mockbee. “I keep my eyes open. Then I see how I can take that and reinterpret it, using modern technology.” He, with his students, discovered a way to actually make an impact on his own surroundings. Not with the funds of a distant developer, or a wealthy philanthropist wishing to bestow thousands of ‘affordable housing’ on the town. Instead, he dove in and “went to war” with the very real struggles and needs of an individual person, family, and community. This reminds me more of David Pastre’s studio in Charleston than anything else: genuine blood, sweat, and tears go into these projects. It is not easy work. But I can imagine that these projects take hold even more permanently within the students’ minds, as they are extremely personal and each one is desperately necessary. Mockbee said that the best way to make real architecture is through honesty: each of these projects evolved through an acknowledgement that the structure was not Mockbee’s, nor his students’ to dictate, but instead a moral obligation to its client to be done right. The Rural Studio was many students’ first intimate experience with “the smell and feel of poverty.” This implies that a client’s need is not solely visual, and yet Mockbee utilized the art of paintings to bring awareness of Hale County’s dire need to potential donors. He used all of the skills in his repertoire to bring this vision to life. 

He asked, “Do I have the courage to make my gift count for something?”

Is that not what each person should ask himself, regardless of profession? Mockbee took his gift of "architect" and made a real, physical impact on not only the landscape of his community, but the people within it and the people that helped build it. I don’t really think that this made architecture political. I think he simply pushed architecture off of its high horse and made it human again.