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- Auburn has an exceptional program called the Rural Studio.

And it's amazing to me, I think it only has been around for about 20 years and it all began with a couple of architects riding around Alabama and saying, there's an awful lot of people that really don't use architectural services and how can we as a profession of architects assist with what we know to help communities?

And so over those 20 years, they have done the land grant mission in a way.

They have gone in and done training programs.

I think more than a thousand citizen architects, they've been able to go in, and obviously every student that comes to Auburn, in architecture, has the opportunity to work at the Rural Studio, be engaged with some of their projects, to see how you can help people within areas of our state that normally architects don't work.

Then in research, they've been able to look at unique and unusual building items.

They've been able to create lower cost housing for people to get into homes.

And then in the area of outreach, they have gone in and done restoration work.

In the town of Newbern, they have created fire stations, they have created libraries out of old bank buildings.

They've just done marvelous work.

And so to me, this is a really great story about how a profession can improve the quality of life for all people.

- The Rural Studio is a design-build program, perhaps one of the earliest design-build programs in the country, and very much focused on providing a hands-on, immersive experience for students in our undergraduate architecture program.

If a student is interested in building anything that people are going to be interacting with, whether it's a product, whether it is a building, whether it is a cluster of buildings, whether it's planning a town, this is the college to be at.

We allow students to imagine and to build both in real life and in the imagined virtual world, whether it's for game design or for set design.

So they can go from the infinite to the intimate.

We believe that the opportunity that we give to Rural Studio students is not just to become better architects, but become better citizen architects.

So they get to understand what it is to be immersed in an environment.

They get to understand about people's lives, about choices, sometimes hard choices that people have to make because of the circumstances.

And in that, how do you provide one of those necessities if we look at food, shelter and clothing as the three necessities, how do you provide one of those necessities in a way that respects the dignity of every human being and also believes that everybody deserves good design?

This is not something that is for the privileged few; it is for everybody.

And how do you give them something that creates that pride of place which begins with a home for everybody?

I'd like to borrow a statement that a colleague made where he said that, we don't ask our students at Rural Studio just to build, we ask them to build up.

So that's what we do there.

When the students go there, it's a binary condition.

You're all in or you're not meant to be at Rural Studio.

So there's no in-between.

You don't go there and then recalibrate to understand what it is.

It is mind, body, and soul all the time.

It is intense, it's exhausting, and it's not for the fainthearted.

- Rural Studio was established almost 30 years ago as part of the architecture program at Auburn University.

The program, the architecture program at Auburn is a five-year program.

It's an undergraduate program.

It leads to licensure.

That five years is a normal length of time for an accredited undergraduate degree in architecture.

As part of that five years that students spend with us on campus, they have an opportunity to come out to Rural West Alabama from anywhere from one semester to up to two years of their study of that five years of time that they have with us.

In that time that they are out at Rural Studio in West Alabama, the students live and work there in residency and they design and build all kinds of community infrastructure for communities that really need it.

We have about a three-county service area that we operate within.

We operate within about a 25-mile radius of Newbern.

And over the last almost 30 years, our students have designed and built over 200 projects.

Everything from single-family housing to fire stations, libraries, healthcare work, educational work, lots of parks and recreational work, boys and girls clubs, you name it.

If our community needs it, our students can design and build it.

The program was founded on a handful of simple premises.

The first is that you come to university to learn things, to gain knowledge.

What we found is knowledge is really important, but know-how is even more important.

And it's that transference of knowledge to know-how through actual experience that Rural Studio is all about.

So the easiest way to say that is the best way to learn how to do somethin' is to actually do it.

It's premise number one.

Second premise is, is that we're trying to do some pretty difficult things around complex situations that we don't always know how to do ourselves.

So the second premise that Rural Studio was founded on was that when you're trying to do difficult and complex things that you don't quite know how to do it, the best way to do it is to do it together.

So the program is extraordinary collaborative.

The students collaborate with their faculty, with their community members, with their clients, and with all kinds of consultants to do the work.

The third sort of foundational principle of Rural Studio is that good design is for everybody.

It's living in a good, healthy, dignified home is a human right that everyone should have access to.

And when the program was founded, it was, sort of we thought of that as a, not just kind of a moral or ethical responsibility, but it was just a professional responsibility.

Examples we often use of what we mean by professionalism: if you think about a doctor or lawyer driving down the road and they see an accident on the side of the road, a doctor can't stop and check their watch or check to see if you have insurance to see if they are gonna help, they have a professional responsibility to act when they see people in crisis.

Architecture is the same way.

If architects are gonna be a profession, when we see folks in crisis, we have a professional responsibility to act.

And so we really try to instill that in our students, those three principles.

You learn how to do things by doing them.

You do difficult, complex things together.

And when you see people in crisis, you act.

That's a professional responsibility.

So if our students leave Rural Studio with those three kinda ideas under their belt about what being an architect today means, then we've done our job.

- The Rural Studio is an off-campus program of the School of Architecture at Auburn University.

We are about three hours west of the school and we take architecture students, specifically architecture students out of the ivory tower of the campus and we bring them out to Rural West Alabama, where, unlike most architecture students, most architecture student are simply at the level of drawing and designing on paper, and out here the students get to design and build.

And the beauty of their opportunity is that the things they get to build hopefully help some folks out here.

So we've done anything from houses to community centers, town halls, fire stations, libraries, parks.

Been quite prolific over the last, nearly 30 years.

When they come here, they're told to be respectful of this place.

Not to tell people how to live their lives, to listen, and to learn.

I think that's how I've operated out here.

I've got a silly accent.

And although I've lived here over 20 years, I'm still an outsider.

And so it's difficult to come into a small rural community like this.

And you have to be respectful.

So they're charged to be respectful.

And they're actually charged to leave the place, kind of borrow the place, but, and that they're welcomed as guests to the place, but to leave it just a little bit better than they found it.

So I think we encourage opportunism.

Always take the next opportunity as the most important opportunity.

I think we encourage folks to be respectful.

But I think from an architectural point of view, I think we really believe that everybody deserves good design.

And I think that's, it's almost like housing, like good, everybody deserves good housing, good shelter.

So why shouldn't good design be kind of a, kind of a human right?

'Cause it's aspirational.

We want our folks to bring joy to the world.

And since the '60s professions like planning have been so discredited for various reasons.

So I think the dreamers and architects can be the dreamers in this world and to make, quite help make the world a better place.

Why not, right?

And small baby steps.

If you help one kid with a boys and girls club or with a library, that's a small victory, right?

You cannot change the world, but you can do it incrementally.

And I hope that we, I think in the, we empower students I think not to be, I think we embolden them to ask critical questions, but I think we give them an opportunity to start to understand how they can, who they can ask to find the answers or get close to finding the answers.

So I think, I hope they leave here with curiosity and ambition for the world and delight in the world.

And also, to see architecture as being a service as well, that it's about helping people.

It's not just being the plaything of the rich and famous.

'Cause that's normally what the architect does, is it kind of takes scraps off the table of the rich and the wealthy and does those things.

And we really encourage our students to be proactive and be really contributive members of society, to be a citizen architect.

There's not enough, that term is not used enough in this world.

In this world, it's even getting your education you have to pay for your education here, and so therefore it's about you.

And I was brought up in a world where the education, post-war education in England, was society was educating you to batter you, but a better society.

And I think we all should think about education as battering society, not just about ourselves.

I mean, what a message, right?

- When I was a freshman actually at Auburn, I heard Samuel Mockbee speak and I was so inspired by the work that he was doing out here.

This was like 1997.

And I just knew that I needed to, wanted to be a part of that, this program.

And I was actually in landscape architecture and I swapped over to architecture so I could participate.

And I've just tried to stay as long as I possibly can and now here I am running the third year program and as associate professor.

So I think I'm pretty lucky.

When I was an undergrad architecture student, the thing that spoke to me the most was really getting to help people.

I didn't really understand the educational part about learning to put building together until I had that opportunity.

And I have a knack for that, too.

I mean, I like to make and build and show students how to make and build, but the thing that spoke to me the most when I was 18 years old was getting to help people.

And then the making part came later.

This program is a lot different than most architecture programs.

There are some that, a lot of architecture programs do building like design build like we do, but we're fully immersive.

So our students move from main campus and then they move out to here and they live here on campus.

And when you're the older students, you go and live in Greensboro.

And it's almost like a full-time job.

Now, I know that sounds kind of scary, but they work, with my students work with me all day, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, they have other classes on Mondays and Friday afternoons.

So we really get to know each other very well.

And we're kind of like, I tell them, we're like a little office.

And I know I'm their professor, but they're working with me, not for me, as a professor.

And so we really get a lot done.

And it's really fun to see a group of 20, 21-year-olds that come out, move from Auburn, some of them don't even know how to load a bit into a driver and put a screw into a board.

And then by the end of it, you would be amazed at the things that they learn and the growth that they make in just four months.

We learn through a process of iteration.

So we give you a design problem, we give a student a design problem, they make a solution, they draw something, and then they get feedback.

And they work in a studio with all their other classmates.

So they have a desk in the building and they have their supplies.

It's a really collaborative and learning environment.

Design thinking is what we wanna teach.

There's not always a right or wrong; there's just maybe a better way to do it.

And your professors are helping you understand that.

And it's like that out here too, except the little, the thing that's different than a class in main campus is that you're actually getting to try to make the thing that you drew on paper.

And it's just another whole learning process 'cause it's never gonna be perfect the first time.

That's what I tell my students.

And then we'll just try again until we get it right or as close as we can to being right.

And it's a really wonderful learning experience.

I mean, that's how I learned about architecture and building and making, is just trying.

And so I think that's, to me, the most important and fun part about architecture school.

I think that the most important, one of the unique things about Rural Studio is that we've been in this location in Newbern, in Hale County, and around Greensboro for almost 30 years now.

So I think that our commitment, and Auburn University's commitment, School Of Architecture's commitment to being here and bringing students out into this community is really the most impactful and important part of our work.

You have to gain trust when you're new to a community.

And we always tell our students that we are guests here, but we are members of the community.

And we wanna learn from the folks who live here.

We're not here to teach people anything; we're here to learn from this community.

And that's what I tell my students about our clients as well, is that yes, our clients, they get a, they're gonna get a house, which is wonderful, but the whole intention is for those students to learn about putting buildings together, it's not about giving something or fixing somebody or anything like that.

We're not here to make judgments; we're here to learn and make friends.

And I think that make, the best outcomes come with that mentality.

So my students are juniors that move out from main campus and I mentioned that we build a house each year, but it's a little bit more than that.

We are working directly with the Front Porch Initiative, which is the research and development arm of the Rural Studio that focuses on housing affordability, and we've developed a research loop which has been beneficial for that program and for my students, where we take, there are four prototype houses that, well, over the course of 15 years, the Front Porch Initiative have developed, we've developed, these are student-developed designs, we've built over 25 or 26 different prototypes.

And from those, the Front Porch Initiative selects the ones to develop further, and they're working to push these housing designs out to other housing nonprofits across the country.

But our part of that, the third year students' part of that, is that we take one of those four prototypes and we interview, prototypes are usually designed without a client in mind because they need to serve a lot of different people, but sometimes that gets a little cold because houses also need to suit the needs of an individual.

So what my students have been doing for the past three years is doing some pretty amazing and intense interviews of our clients.

And we do that through voice and through speaking, but we also do really beautiful drawings of our client's houses.

And they study the houses, we don't draw our clients necessarily, but we learn about our clients through the everyday objects that we've determined that are important to our clients, and we also study the love and care of the existing homes that our clients have been living in.

And from that, we alter those prototypes to suit our particular client.

And our goal is not that it's so unique to one person that it can't be replicated, but the goal is that the things that we learned from our clients here could be important to other clients in the country.

So anyway, it's a really interesting way for my students to get really deep in the house designs instead of broad.

We don't design from scratch, but we really get into the details of the building.

And that's a great place for third year students to study and to be - I've been living in Newbern for 60 years.

Emily, Elliott, and Pat come by to visit one evening, we sat and talked and everything, but we never mentioned the house.

So she came back again, that's when she mentioned the house.

And as was said, I told her just wonderful, glad, I was glad to do it.

It was just wonderful.

They did a great job.

They dos a great job.

And everybody been real friendly.

They was real friendly.

Student and all.

I just fell in love with them.

So I just adopt all of 'em.

It is lovely.

I have living room combined dining room, kitchen, washroom, bathroom, bedroom.

Lovely.

And a porch, which I love.

Oh, they think it is beautiful and everybody wanted to know how they could get one, just like with my neighbors.

They did more now, she wanted one just like it, so they all enjoyed it, just like me.

They enjoyed.

Thank you.

Anyway I can help out, in any way, just let me know.

And I just really love 'em and appreciate it.

- It's a very physical place.

I mean, it's not, there are much easier ways for students to get an architectural education than out here.

And we're very demanding.

I mean, there is something at stake here.

If the roof leaks, if something breaks, if something is not well-thought out, it has really true and clear implications.

Things are at stake here.

And we asked the students to take responsibility for that.

So they'd given huge license and huge agency and they are asked to make decisions.

And all I do is I kind of try to make sure that they stay between the lines.

They might go off in the ditch, but I'll get them out of the ditch, but I won't let them go off the cliff.

And so they have that, those, I mean, I wish I'd done an education like this.

It's remarkable.

I mean, the state of Alabama should be really proud of this program.

It's remarkable.

Inevitably, at the beginning of the project, the beginning of the Rural Studio, there's very much a kind of scavenge nature to it because the infrastructural support wasn't here, the dollars weren't here.

But over the years, we've had support from three really remarkable family foundations across the United States who were kind of snakebit by this place and supported us.

But it's also true that when you're doing homes and community projects, you have to start to think about the sustainability and longevity of materials, not about being goofy, frankly.

I mean, delight is important, don't get me wrong, but there's many ways to find delight in the way that you use materials and spaces, right?

And I think, I just said, you start to do something like a firehouse, you've got to be in control of that and you've got to make really sensible decisions 'cause the organization may go up and down, but that building has got to stay there solid and sound and doing its job of making sure that those fire trucks don't freeze 'cause they've got water inside 'em, right?

So just responsibility at the end of the day.

And our students really rise to that, I mean, again, there's always something at stake in these projects that you can't avoid.

So it's really, it's not only that, but we're building them.

So every conversation we have is about not only the design, but you're actually gonna be building this.

And that's, again, a wonderful part of their education because they're, normally you just hand a project to a builder and it's his problem, here they get to learn how difficult it is to do something well, right?

And we don't encourage them to do it the slowest way, we encourage them to aspire to something that's beautiful and to do the way that we feel offers both, meets their aspirations, but also the client and our community partner aspirations.

So they can reach for the world, right?

And if it takes a little bit longer, they've learned that.

And I hope down the road, they'll be respectful to all of the collaborators, the folk, the subcontractors all of those guys that are trying to do the job well.

So I think that's a terrific part of their education.

And I hope, something that they, give some respect in their heart.

- I was a student at Auburn University.

I graduated in 2018, but I got to stick around at Rural Studio for the past two years, three years.

And I work with Emily McGlohn as an instructor and I help teach students every semester, third year students.

I went to Auburn because I heard about this place.

So I was, I grew up in Birmingham, so pretty close by, and I always wanted to come out here and check it out.

So I went into the architecture program to see if I liked it, and then I did.

So out here, we learn how to build, design, and we learned the basics and then the nit-picky tiny things.

So the house behind me is a house for a woman named Ophelia Reed.

It is based off of a prototype, it's based off of the prototype of a 20K home based off of the research that we've done for the past 20 years, housing research.

Ophelia lives with her son right now and she plans to move into this house that we just built with her son.

It's taken us about two years to complete, but we get new students every semester.

So it's a little bit longer than typical, but COVID slowed us down, like it slowed everyone down.

A lot of students don't really know a lot about Rural Studio before coming out here.

And when you come out here, it's hard not to fall in love with this place.

The community is wonderful.

The students that you get to know, you just make bonds that you will never find anywhere else.

And then the bonds that you have with your professors are great too, because the one-on-one teaching is amazing.

And it's just really empowering.

We met Ophelia in the fall of 2019.

And she got to know those students, and those students interviewed her, got to take a look around her house and see what she liked and what she needed.

So we based our design off of those things.

She has a nook in this home that we built her that will be where she sleeps.

She likes sleeping in the living room.

And it will house her daybed that she loves and also will be a nice place that's private for her, but also out in the public, which is what she likes.

I came out here when I was a third year, I think it was the spring of 2016, and I fell absolutely in love.

I'd always heard about this place since I was in high school, but actually being here was incredible.

I think in architecture school, or even in high school, there's sort of a stigma about women in construction and women builders.

But when you're out here, it just feels like a level playing field.

There's no judgment, and we all start at the same level, and we work our way up.

And it's very empowering being out here.

I grew up in Birmingham and I came out to Newbern.

And living in a rural place is very, very different, but it's incredible.

It's beautiful, it's small, there's a lot more to do nature-wise.

There's also just a lot, it's a lot more intimate with the community.

You get to know people here a lot better than you would in a big city.

We all are part of one neighborhood.

And it's just been a lot of fun to get closer to everyone out here.

That's probably one of my favorite things.

I just love the people and I love the place.

- The Rural Studio project is all about improving the lives.

Now, lives of community, lives of our state, ultimately the lives of people in this country.

And it starts with affordable, quality housing.

And it's incredible when you think about the impact of housing across the entire spectrum of one's life, 'cause it's not just about having a roof over your head.

We can make that happen.

But is it a quality roof, is the ventilation good, is it energy efficient, is it a sound structure?

'Cause we know those things impact the financial wherewithal for someone, it impacts their health.

If you think about the state of Alabama in particular, in the health disparities that we face, we know from, again, more than two decades of this project, of how it impacts the health of the people who live in those houses.

But it goes beyond that.

It goes beyond building a community.

And I think Newbern is a great example of how this project really has energized a community that needed to be energized.

And the work that they've done not only in the houses, the 20K houses as they call them, those trying to get them for $20,000, something that's affordable, but the work that they've done on the fire station there.

And I think that's a great example of impact.

'Cause you think about a fire station and you say, what's a fire station have to do with affordable housing?

Well, without a fire station, then maybe there's more house fires.

If there's more house fires, maybe the insurance is higher, maybe you can't get insurance.

Without insurance, you can't get a mortgage.

Without a mortgage, you can't get the house.

So it all ties together.

And that's a beautiful facility there, the fire department station, and it's a rallying point for the folks in the area.

But also what they've done in the library.

And again, you think about, well, what's a library have to do with people's living?

Again, it's a place for people to come.

They can have a quiet time to read.

They can get on the internet.

They can meet.

It really goes long ways toward building that community.

We've done this for a long time and I think that we've shown the advantages, the vast implications, very positive implications of doing this in Newbern and beyond.

And that, to me, is the exciting thing.

We certainly wanna continue to build the community that we've been for a long time.

And that's now just part of who we are as Auburn University.

When our students go over there, they're engaged, they're excited.

Our students get to see and feel the impact of the work that they're doing, which extends well-beyond.

We've had countless students, admittedly, probably go over there thinking, what is this and what am I getting into, and come away with a brand new perspective on what they want to do with their life.

And they go out in not only other parts of Alabama, but other parts of the country and start making those difference.

It's almost like we're seeding these things through our students throughout.

So we definitely want to continue our investment in Newbern, but we wanted to go beyond that.

And being there as long as we have, you think of it as a very, from a research perspective, it's a very longitudinal research project, one of the longest in the country from that perspective.

So we wanna continue to do those things because the things that we learn in Newbern come right back here to our researchers in our classroom, and we find ways to get better which then goes right back into Newbern.

So it's a great real life testing environment where everybody wins.

One of the great things about the Rural Studio is the impact it has on our students.

And it changes their lives, it changes the lives of our faculty.

It gives them that different perspective that they wouldn't have had.

I think, for architects, and I'm gonna generalize a little bit here, but it it's so much about putting it on paper and the structure and the drawings and the beautiful building or whatever you may be designing.

What the Rural Studio does is humanize that.

Humanize it.

That the students, and that's what I saw when I was visiting, was just how excited and energized the students were because of the impact that they were making.

It wasn't just about how can I design this house, that was a big part of it and they took it very, very seriously; it's about how can we design a quality structure that's gonna stand the test of time, be energy efficient, all the things that they've learned and learned in the classroom.

But when you see the impact on that family.

They name these houses as they, the generation's houses, after people who lived in 'em.

They see that real impact.

And that forever changes those students.

- So Rural Studio, I do reflect on this thing and wonder why, at my age and sort of at this point in my career, I still recognize something I did in college as being formative.

And I think when you talk to anybody that goes through this program and has been through it, you'll find some similar version of, yes, it was a significant period in my life.

It was instructive.

So when I went through the Rural Studio, Sambo Mockbee was still alive, it was before Andrew Freear had taken over the helm, and it was a very sort of new program, when I was out there in '95 or '94, they'd only built two projects at that point.

And so it was super new, it was very grassroots, it was still trying to figure itself out.

And there was something just really compelling about being outside of studio, outside of the sort of envelope of the university.

And in this, in a strange place, that is Rural west Alabama, but which is a familiar place to those of us who grew up in Rural Alabama, even if I grew up in East Alabama, and then to actually interact with the people we were building a house for and with the communities that we worked with all in the sort of context of applying what we were learning in school in a meaningful way.

And so I think it was, and maybe it's that meaningful aspect to it.

It was not, I think the part of it that was compelling for me compared to what I was getting at the university, which was still a great education, was the application and the meaning and the sort of relevance of it all to a larger vision of just a better Alabama.

It's a total environment if you think about it.

You are living and working and dining around everybody all the time.

Like you're just constantly with this group of people.

And then you're also working with people outside of the program who are real clients and real, like in my case, my senior thesis, we built a farmer's market in Thomaston, Alabama.

I mean, we would go, we work all day and then we would go to Patsy Sumrall's house that night and she'd cook us dinner.

We'd hang out with her neighbors' kids, who, and I still talk to some of those people.

So there is that sense of community and investment.

But it's equally characterized by just the intensity of being almost in this laboratory of not just architectural ideas, but to some degree sort of social awareness and cultural awareness.

And so that kind of eye opening experience that I think is really sort of part of the fever.

I became aware of a lot of things at once when I went out to the Rural Studio.

I was closer to clients who were experiencing poverty and social conditions and economic conditions that I'd just never been near.

And it wasn't just sort of driving past it, I was engaging with it.

- I'm an urban land scientist and I study how urbanization and how the changing urban settlements across the globe are impacting the planet.

The sustainability of the planet, the health of the planet.

And so through that, that job, I am in part in charge of the nighttime satellites at NASA, because nighttime satellites have an easier time imaging urban settlements.

I came to the Rural Studio fresh out of college, so I was still very much exploring who I was as a person.

I'm from Alabama.

I was a design graduate, so of course I was naturally drawn to this internationally known program for design that was in my backyard but I had never been to even that part of my state before, 'cause I grew up in the big city of Birmingham.

So when I got there, I was tasked with the project to build the first $20,000 house.

And this was supposed to be a house that was gonna cost around $10,000 in materials and $10,000 in labor.

So the whole house was gonna be the price of a car.

And this is not our labor, this was supposed to be a contractor's labor in the future that we would build the first couple prototypes.

So when I got there, it felt like, I didn't know what I had gotten into, I didn't know if this was doable.

I was matched with a bunch of architects who were from different countries and thought very differently from me.

And there was definitely a part to the project where it was a difficult marriage of trying to do this seemingly impossible task with this seemingly very diverse team in this place that none of us knew.

And slowly through the course of the year, your toil, and it really becomes like a full immersion experience where like night and day you are thinking about this project, you are physically wrestling with some of the timbers and the questions about whether, how you can minimize the costs, but also like create this dignified space for people, you're meeting with clients, you're talking to them about how they live in spaces.

It's this iterative critique where other architects that are well-known are coming in and giving you feedback.

So it's a very intense experience.

I mean, you're waking up in the middle of the night thinking about the number of nails and the number of screws you're using in the flashing.

And it was a very, very rewarding experience.

And I ended up staying for a second year as kind of an instructor.

And yeah, so that was my experience there.

So first and foremost, I think the Rural Studio gave me skills.

It gave me the ability to build and to learn how things are put together to keep a roof from leaking.

And then I think maybe the larger things that I took away from Rural Studio is the importance of rural America, the diverse perspectives represented in that part of the country.

I mean, I was from Alabama, but I had never really experienced both the cancers and the like enchantment of that area of my home state.

It engaged me with really big questions about systematic injustice and what are the environments that we're creating, what will they mean for that community and for, really like the larger network of materials and resources that go into that building?

It sort of implanted a lot of those questions in my mind.

And actually those questions ended up being quite at the forefront of my research in my current job.

It also gave me really close friends that, unlikely friends, that I would never have met.

Like I think one of my, I would consider friends from the Rural Studio is like a 70-year-old farmer who, every year we send text back and forth of our kale pache.

We have very different lifestyles and very different day-to-day existences, but we care about a lot of the same issues.

And so just the connection of people across place and across life experience, to me, became very clear.

- So Project Horseshoe Farm is a community-based non-profit organization that has a three-part mission.

The first part is to work with and build on the strengths of local communities.

The second is to support and help improve the health and quality of life of our vulnerable neighbors.

And the third part is about preparing citizens service leaders for tomorrow's communities.

We do this through four basic projects.

We work here in our local community center to support elderly people, people who are isolated or vulnerable, to give them a place to be, provide support, activities, exercise, nutrition, trying to help improve their health and quality of life.

We also have a housing program for women with mental illness to provide support and help them to live independently.

We also work with children at our local elementary school, supporting teachers to provide more relationship-based mentorship and support to kids.

And our last area is providing extra relationship-based support to patients at our local community health centers.

I think there's a sense that we're contributing to a lot of really good things that are going on here in the community.

I think bringing young people, along with the Rural Studio, students is just, I think, wonderful addition to the community.

But really our focus in relationship to our mission is building on existing strengths here.

And one of the things that we really focus on is this idea of neighbors helping neighbors and I think that's one of, part of the wonderful spirit that's going on here in the Black Belt, and to whatever extent that we can help extend or support that is really what we're trying to do.

A lot of it came from my experience going through a lot of sort of Project Horseshoe Farm, came from my experience in going through medical school.

I think that there was so much focus on the technical aspects of medicine and it really seemed to miss the mark for a lot of the patients that I was seeing, especially patients whose lives are much more complicated, people who are older, people who suffer with mental illness, or have other issues that are going on in their life.

It seemed like they really needed to focus or needed to be a program that focus on those broader issues that really make a difference in people's lives, especially people who are elderly or people who have mental illness.

And so we wanted to develop a program that really did address things in a more integrative way, but also to prepare students who are interested in that sort of work to see what a model looked like in which they could make a meaningful impact in that way.

The connection with Rural Studio has been fantastic, between Horseshoe Farm and Rural Studio has been fantastic.

I got to know Andrew.

And when I first moved here, started to get to know some of the students and really formed nice relationships.

And then over the years, started to talk with the Rural Studio about ways that we might be able to work more formally together.

I think it really started when Rural Studio students started to become involved in our youth programs and started volunteering in our youth programs and it just became part of, sort of the solidifying that relationship between the two organizations.

And then a few years ago, we started to talk about potentially having projects where the Rural Studio actually took part in projects with Horseshoe Farm.

And out of that came two projects, which have been some of the most incredible things that have happened to Horseshoe Farm.

One was a housing program, developing these really innovative units to provide supported housing for members of our community.

And those are a couple blocks away here on South Street.

And then the second project is this beautiful project here, really transforming our community center and I think bringing our community center together.

And that's really been the evolution of our relationship.

So this building was donated to Horseshoe Farm in 2000, I believe, 14 or 15.

And we've really spent the last seven years renovating this as a community center that makes it a place for everybody in the community to feel welcome and a place where people can come together and support one another.

And I think that this courtyard really brings this entire space together.

I think if you look at Downtown Greensboro, I think there's really some neat things happening downtown, but there really isn't a public community space, outdoor community space.

And if you look at most downtowns that really are doing very, very well, they do have places where anybody is welcome and can sort of spend some time.

And so I think that this courtyard not only brings together and creates this wonderful space for extension of our programs, but I think creates this linkage between Horseshoe Farm and the broader community where the people we serve are volunteers and the broader community can come together in a way that, I think, builds on wonderful strengths in this community.

And I think it's gonna create so much potential for that linkage.

As you probably know, the Rural Studio, the projects are run by the students and really through the mentorship of the Rural Studio staff.

And we've been lucky to work with incredible team, Caleb, Claudia, Claire, and Zach have been incredible just beyond anything we could have imagined.

And it's, I think, sometimes hard to believe that students who are 21, 22 years old can come in and look at something and have the sort of vision and the perseverance and the hard work to pull something that actually makes a real difference in the community together.

And when you look at this space, we were talking earlier about how there aren't courtyards almost anywhere in the country that are as nice as this, and for a group of students to design and follow through and build something like this, I just don't know that you can really put that into words, the impact and the potential impact that this is going to have.

I think the one thing that, a couple things, that sort of crossed my mind is how many 20-year-olds are willing to give up four years of their lives and persevere and sacrifice to make something happen?

There's so many young people who I think want to see the world better and don't really know what goes into sort of making the world a better place.

And I think that what stands out about the Rural Studio students is not only their idealism, but that they're willing to put in the work and the sacrifice to actually make things better.

So Caleb and Claudia, our two young people, who I've had the pleasure to get to know over the last four years, watching Caleb and Claudia come in every day always smiling, always having a positive attitude and taking all the steps to move this project forward and to persevere over the last four years has been one of the most remarkable things I've seen any people do, and to see young people who are just starting out in their careers to make that kind of sacrifice and make that kind of commitment and to see something through, again, is, I think, beyond words.

I had talked with them all the time about sort of this idea of we're gonna do everything we can to make sure that all their efforts and their energies aren't wasted and that I think that the impact that this is going to have on Horseshoe Farm, I think on people's lives in the broader community, I love so many of the Rural Studio projects but I really do think, by virtue of its location, its relationship to the community center, its relationship to the broader town, this is going to be one of the more impactful projects.

And I think it really is a testament to their hard work and their creativity and their perseverance to have sort of created this that I think really is gonna be a wonderful and incredible catalyst for the community.

- The most mind-blowing aspect about teaching here is my student's dedication to the work that we're doing.

So it is more work than a regular architecture studio.

Like I said, we kind of work full time and we're like a little office, but they understand the importance of the work for the person we're working for and for their own education.

And they will put in so many extra hours and take so much care and figure things out on their own with confidence.

And I just am always amazed at what they're able to do.

I have full confidence in them.

That's my teaching strategy.

- These places are mysteries to people.

And there are lovely and wonderful people here that are so supportive of us and enjoy our collaboration.

And I think we have been successful here 'cause we dug our heels in 30 years ago and stayed in one place and we've become a neighbor.

There are programs around the world that have tried to replicate what we do, but they kind of, they're what I call helicopter programs.

So they come somewhere and they do something and then they leave.

And they have no idea whether or not it helped or not.

And here, I mean, if we do good here, we don't really hear about it.

That you can imagine here, if we screw up, well, we're neighbors, right?

I mean, and I think that, for me, is the message that this program has become, I hope, a trusted neighbor.

It's why the municipalities come and ask for help with their parks, or their town halls, and their housing issues, or their planning issues, or even help with an engineer to do a culvert pipe.

So I'm very proud of that.

That they've recognized that this little undergraduate program in the middle of nowhere can actually be a huge resource to them.

So that's, I think, probably been the main reason for our success.

But I think, yeah, if folks are entrusting, contributing financially, we can spend that money so far that you'll be incredibly proud.

We had an organization from a well-known musician who came here for one of our events and afterwards wrote a very nice check, and he contributed to three houses, right?

The building of three houses, three families.

And he's like, I could never give that amount and contribute so much to three families anywhere else.

- The architects of the future need to have at least a working knowledge or vocabulary with which to engage these other disciplines.

So I guess to any 13 or 14-year-olds interested in that, I would tell them to read broadly and wander a bit, engage the other ways of seeing a place.

And don't just aim to change a place, but to understand it first.

- Being out here, you learn more than you could ever ask for in architecture, but you also get to know the community.

And I think a lot of times, in school, you miss that aspect of architecture.

Being out here, you get to know your neighbor, the client that you're building for, and also the community within the studio.

You can't get that anywhere else.

- What I would say to the 13, 14-year-old who's thinking about, gosh, architecture looks like a neat field, Auburn University has a great architecture school, but can I make a difference in the world?

Rural Studio is the prime example of how you make a difference in the world.