Tag: rural-studio | ArchDaily

The Architecture of Rewilding: Designing for Ecosystem Recovery

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 07:30:00 +0000

As climate instability reshapes design priorities, architecture is increasingly drawn into ecological debates not as a spectator but as a participant. Among the concepts gaining traction is rewilding, a practice rooted in the restoration of self-sustaining ecosystems through the reintroduction of biodiversity, the removal of barriers, and the rebalancing of human presence in the landscape. Though often associated with conservation biology, rewilding also opens up new spatial and architectural imaginaries — ones that challenge conventional notions of permanence, authorship, and use.

Designing Shared Rural Environments: Defining Public Spaces beyond Urban Metrics

Olivia Poston — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 06:30:00 +0000

Rural environments are often difficult to define in administrative and professional contexts and carry notable biases and complexities. Population and density thresholds are the most common determinants for drawing administrative boundaries, yet other factors, such as infrastructure, employment, and services, contribute to the characterization of rural environments. In the United States, the Census Bureau defines rurality, not by its characteristics or resources, but by absences, as "any population, housing, or territory not in an urban area." For the design and planning community, it is important to define the future of rural environments, not through the metrics of urban resources or infrastructure, but to design a new framework for flexibility, adaptation, and health.

These Alabama Architecture Students are Designing and Building Low-Cost Homes for Rural America

Collin Abdallah — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 06:00:00 +0000

Rural Studio, a student-centered design/build program at Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction, has announced a collaboration with the mortgage loan company Fannie Mae to support the school’s 20K Initiative. This initiative continues to contribute to the development of "beautiful, healthy and resilient houses that afford financially vulnerable homeowners the ability to live in dignity, security and well within their means."

Architecture's Evolving Role: How Community-Engaged Design Can Encourage Social Change

Collin Abdallah — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 09:30:00 +0000

The role of the architect—and even architecture itself—in society today is changing. A lack of interest in critical social issues from a profession that holds such high responsibility within a community is a problem that should no longer be avoided.

AIA Honors Rural Studio with 2015 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award

Karissa Rosenfield — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 01:00:00 +0000

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has announced Rural Studio as winner of the 2015 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award, recognizing the Newbern, Alabama–based design/build program for its student-led projects that have catered to one of the South’s poorest and most underserved regions.

Twenty Years Later, What Rural Studio Continues to Teach Us About Good Design

Rennie Jones — Tue, 13 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Hale County, Alabama is a place full of architects, and often high profile ones. The likes of Todd Williams and Billie Tsien have ventured there, as have Peter Gluck and Xavier Vendrell, all to converge upon Auburn University’s Rural Studio. Despite the influx of designers, it is a place where an ensemble of all black will mark you as an outsider. I learned this during my year as an Outreach student there, and was reminded recently when I ventured south for the Studio’s 20th Anniversary celebration. While the most recent graduates took the stage, I watched the ceremony from the bed of a pick-up truck, indulging in corn-coated, deep-fried catfish, and reflected on what the organization represents to the architecture world.

Rural Studio Celebrates 20th Anniversary with Eight 20K Houses

Barbara Porada — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Auburn University's Rural Studio, an undergraduate program that focuses on designing well-built, low-cost housing for the poor across three counties of Alabama, will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this 2013-14 academic year. Since 1993, Rural Studio has been recycling, reusing, remaking and using local materials while maintaining the belief that both rich and poor deserve good design. In honor of 20 successful years of helping Alabama's rural poor, Rural Studio will, for the first time, design eight 20K Houses in one year- and they need your help.

Loft House / Ryan Stephenson, Joey Fante, Kait Caldwell, Aimee O'Carroll

David Basulto — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:02:27 +0000

“Learn by doing” sounds like something very obvious when it comes to education in most fields, and specially in architecture schools.