 Trade In this Item for up to £7.00
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £7.00, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Hale County, Alabama, is one of the least likely places on earth to find great architecture. Poor, black, and mostly ignored since Walker Evans and James Agee brought it to world attention in 1939 in "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," Hale is "a left-behind place," explain Andrea Oppenheimer Dean and Timothy Hursley in the introduction to their remarkable book. But the hardscrabble land and its proud residents "seduced" Samuel Mockbee and has inspired the Auburn University students who operate out of the Rural Studio that Mockbee established there. The result is a legacy of extraordinary buildings - small in scale, miniscule in budget, but great in spirit and design.
Mockbee, who died at the end of last year, had strong convictions about the role of architects in our society and the need to teach students how to serve their communities. A big man who knew how to have a good time, Mockbee anchored his work and his teaching in a fierce sense of place. You can't understand his architecture without knowing about the land and the people for whom it was created.
This book reflects those ideas. A graceful introduction explains Mockbee, his motivations and his methods, then gives way to a series of chapters rooted in the places - Mason's Bend, Newbern, Sawyerville, Greensboro, Thomaston, and Akron - where the Rural Studio has built. Dean who is a contributing editor of Record, typically begins her descriptions of projects with the people who live in or use them, just the way Mockbee and his students began each project. Photographs show the untidy belongings and loving touches residents have added to their houses. Beat-up bicycles, embroidered tablecloths, and plastic furniture feel perfect in here.
The book also includes a short section of "Interviews with Students, a Teacher, and a Client," an essay by Lawrence Chua on "The Rural Mythology of Samuel Mockbee," and an essay by the photographer Cervin Robinson on the different approaches photographers from Evans to Hurs
Product Description
For almost ten years, Samuel Mockbee, a recent MacArthur Grant recipient, and his architecture students at Auburn University have been designing and building striking houses and community buildings for impoverished residents of Alabama's Hale County. Using salvaged lumber and bricks, discarded tires, hay and waste cardboard bales, concrete rubble, colored bottles, and old license plates, they create inexpensive buildings that bear the trademark of Mockbee's work, which he describes as "contemporary modernism grounded in Southern culture."In a time of unexampled prosperity, when architectural attention focuses on big, glossy urban projects, the Rural Studio provides an alternative of substance. In addition to being a social welfare venture, the Rural Studio--"Taliesin South" as Mockbee calls it--is also an educational experiment and a prod to the architectural profession to act on its best instincts. In giving students hands-on experience in designing and building something real, it extends their education beyond paper architecture. And in scavenging and reusing a variety of unusual materials, it is a model of sustainable architecture. The work of Rural Studio has struck such a chord-both architecturally and socially--that it has been featured on Oprah, Nightline, and CBS News, as well as in Time and People magazines.The Studio has completed more than a dozen projects, including the Bryant "Hay Bale" House, Harris "Butterfly" House, Yancey Chapel, Akron Chapel, Children's Center, H.E.R.O. Playground, Lewis House, Super Sheds and Pods, Spencer House addition, Farmer's Market, Mason's Bend Community Center, Goat House, and Shannon-Dutley House. These buildings, along with the incredible story of the Rural Studio, the people who live there, and Mockbee and his student architects, are detailed in this colorful book, the first on the subject."I tell my students, it's got to be warm, dry, and noble"--Samuel Mockbee
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a must for architects and designers hell bent on community design and participation.
The free design of the projects clearly shows enthusiasm from the client an designer to create projects that are truly inspirational, affordable and useable......
The free design of the projects clearly shows enthusiasm from the client an designer to create projects that are truly inspirational, affordable and useable......
Samuel Mockbee is (or was) a man of our times. He hit upon an area of sub culture that American society hide and forget about.
His philosophy and approach is something we should all aspire to.
A GREAT READ!!!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found this book while researching for architectural projects that are low-budget, yet not compensating the quality in design. It proved to be helpful to a small extent.
The introduction of the book sets the backdrop for the projects that will be introduced later - Hale's County, Mockbee's beliefs, etc. I found Mockbee's beliefs and approach very inspiring.
However, I don't think this book is documented so very well. The main problem is with the layout, not so much Mockbee nor Rural Studio. (Here I assume that information in the book was by choice, not by limitations of confidentiality of project data.)
I found myself wondering about the techniques used in construction, and I had to keep flipping between pages to try to figure out the space and how clients used the space, to relate to the words that were describing the projects.
There are also some one-liners that were under some photographs (not all plates had captions) that kept me wondering... (eg. Why was the trailer moved to the Butterfly House?) as they were not explained elsewhere.
It seems more like a folio for the rural studios in that sense. If I was an alum, I am sure I will need no futher introduction to the projects as I would be familiar with most of the projects presented in the pictures, having seen the real thing (probably).
Perhaps pictures paint a thousand words, but a little more thought in the way to document these projects would be better for readers to connect the text to the pictures (some sketches of plans perhaps?), and to do justice to the projects.
The introduction of the book sets the backdrop for the projects that will be introduced later - Hale's County, Mockbee's beliefs, etc. I found Mockbee's beliefs and approach very inspiring.
However, I don't think this book is documented so very well. The main problem is with the layout, not so much Mockbee nor Rural Studio. (Here I assume that information in the book was by choice, not by limitations of confidentiality of project data.)
I found myself wondering about the techniques used in construction, and I had to keep flipping between pages to try to figure out the space and how clients used the space, to relate to the words that were describing the projects.
There are also some one-liners that were under some photographs (not all plates had captions) that kept me wondering... (eg. Why was the trailer moved to the Butterfly House?) as they were not explained elsewhere.
It seems more like a folio for the rural studios in that sense. If I was an alum, I am sure I will need no futher introduction to the projects as I would be familiar with most of the projects presented in the pictures, having seen the real thing (probably).
Perhaps pictures paint a thousand words, but a little more thought in the way to document these projects would be better for readers to connect the text to the pictures (some sketches of plans perhaps?), and to do justice to the projects.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
samuel mockbee's vision and dedication to providing sustainable and chic architecture to an alabama community is really inspirational!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
