GRAY No. 35

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the fridge and keep the lights on after it’s built—is my most important job as an architect.”

Today, whether he’s working on a $185-per-square-foot first home or a richly funded dream house, he’s inspired by the phrase Rural Studio founder Samuel Mockbee painted above the door

“Architecture should be willing to offend. Otherwise it’s boring.”

—RYAN STEPHENSON, ARCHITECT

of his classroom: “Proceed and Be Bold.” For Stephenson, boldness is expressed not only through nonconformist design choices—an outdoor kids’ swing suspended from a cantilevered second floor; unexpected cladding materials—but

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through the architectural act itself. “As designers, we’ve been given an opportunity to do amazing things, so we should be bold and do them for other people, not for ourselves,” he says.

To that end, regardless of a project’s scale or budget, he’s onsite throughout the construction process, “talking to builders and trying to figure out how to do things better and, honestly, more cheaply for my clients. There is no reason that simple and affordable solutions can’t be as beautiful as complex and expensive ones.”

Mockbee’s motto also inspired Stephenson’s thick-skinned, bring-it-on attitude toward criticism, in which you can still glimpse that kid with the nine-trunk treehouse. “I want my work to evoke emotion both good and bad,” he says. “If you don’t have equal numbers of people saying, ‘That’s wrong’ and ‘That’s beautiful,’ then you’re not really pushing anything. I’m okay with people telling me they don’t like what I do. Architecture should be willing to offend. Otherwise it’s boring.” ❈

ANDREW POGUE

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7/13/17 6:57 PM