Rural Studio Newsletter 2021

FREE TAKE ONE

ALL OF RURAL STUDIO’S NEWS FROM HALE COUNT Y

2020–2021

BORN IN NEWBERN

DESIGNED IN BHAM

PRINTED IN MONTGOMERY

VOL. 10

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In the most unexpected 18 months of our lives, Rural Studio students rose to the challenge. Everyone worked hard to protect each other and our neighbors. We took the time to examine how we can accomplish our goals under new constraints and how we can extend our reach, our impact.

LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR “Last August, if you had told me that we’d make it this far through the COVID-19 pandemic virtually unscathed—100% face-to-face teaching with completion of six projects—I wouldn’t have believed you!” --Letter from the Director by Andrew Freear

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RECENTLY COMPLETED PROJECT The Horseshoe Courtyard projectis complete! Claudia Paz Melendez and Caleb R. Munson dedicated four years of their lives to this project and were loved by everyone.

This beautiful shaded outdoor space offers new opportunities to improve health and quality of life for our vulnerable neighbors.

PAIR GRANT TEAM Communication is key. The work developed through the $1.25 million grant from Auburn University’s Presidential Award for Interdisciplinary Research program helped us to improve how we frame our work and ultimately to produce a collection of information products to help grow both our internal projects and our external impact.

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THE NEWBERN TIMES, VOL. 10

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LET TER FROM THE DIRECTOR

HONORING THE RURAL My dear friends, I hope you and your family and friends all are safe and well. What a time we are all living through!

FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING

in the afternoons, evenings, and weekends.

We were honored with remote Zoom reviews with the likes of John Forney, Mike Newman, Marlon Blackwell, Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, and Julie Eizenberg, who added critical external input and graciously gave their time at a moment when everyone was tired of Zooming.

To finish the year, we celebrated Pig Roast in-house, “Family Style,” alas without student families and our broader community but, in our great tradition, we ate a lot(!), toasted, toured projects, and celebrated with our clients, students, staff, and faculty!

It was marvelous! I have so much to say but no room, so read all about it at ruralstudio.org/tag/pigroast.

Last August, if you had told me that we’d make it this far through the COVID-19 pandemic virtually unscathed—100% face-to-face teaching with the completion of six projects—I wouldn’t have believed and help decarbonize the construction process. you! I cannot say enough about the Rural Studio team, the students, and our community partners Working with McGill has been an extraordinary and clients. I’m so very proud of everyone. learning curve. The collaboration challenged us to We tried to address our challenges creatively and consider how we think about work, how to learn from rigorously to prevent the virus from spreading. In it, and how to measure what we make. It’s made us adversity, we viewed the pandemic as an opportunity realize that architects need to take a position and to critique the way we do things. Everyone stayed in not be passive consumers: we must be contributors Hale County, creating our own bubble and eliminatof knowledge to the global discourse.

With that realization in mind, the Front Porch Iniing travel to protect our fragile community. Fifth-year PROJECTS and graduate teams siloed in separate workspaces in We completed several projects that had been slowed, tiative is going great guns! The supportive work we Red Barn. Third-years all lived and worked at Spencer notably by the pandemic. One of the biggest sto- are doing with our housing partners is amazing. Soon, House to protect the administration at Morrisette ries was the determination of Caleb R. Munson and we will open source the house prototypes, informing House. With student housing “pods” being vacant, Claudia Paz Menendez. Even after three years, they and championing rural housing initiatives beyond we gave them new campground-style power supplies stayed on after the lockdown and completed the Hale County! and provided new kitchen, rec room, and bathroom Horseshoe Courtyard. They were dearly loved in Our work with regional partners creates a feedfacilities. Future 3rd-years will be self-sufficient in the the local community, and folks really didn’t want to back loop: information from clients, builders, and see them leave. They became great role models for community partners on tough everyday building pods and will not live in Morrisette House.

Our wonderful, resilient chef, Catherine Tabb, pro- the other students, and what incredible and bright issues informs the work done in Hale County. What vided lunches and dinners five days a week rather than futures they have. we academics here think might be good ideas are the usual three. And the Farm continues to grow into a In the fall, the graduate team completed the new actually being tried and tested repeatedly, and we cultural fixture that is central to our mission. Through Breathing Wall Mass Timber test buildings; since get to hear and see the results! all seasons, students, faculty, staff, and leftovers enjoy then, Fergie Ferguson and Preston Rains trekked working the soil and eating what we grow. Eric Ball’s west to the mountains, Jacob Elbrecht did a fellow- RURAL IS ALIVE AND KICKING success managing the Farm has increased its pro- ship in New Orleans, and Anna Halepaska started It’s time for a conversation about the symbiosis of ductivity and self-sufficiency; he is now starting to her PhD in Montreal. We hope to celebrate both the rural and urban, to consider them together not sepaplan its role in community outreach and instruction. Breathing Wall Mass Timber Research Project and rately, and to upend cities’ views of rural landscapes This spring, our new Operations Manager, John Horseshoe Courtyard with openings soon. as resources for extraction while giving little back.

Allen, joined the team. He is a champion and supThird-years finished 20K Ophelia’s Home. (Of That short-sighted position creates poverty and is porter of our extraordinary staff—the heart and soul course, Ophelia is delighted!) This project trans- unsustainable. Instead, we must champion the rural of Rural Studio—allowing me to focus on the big formed 20K Joanne’s House into a slightly larger and ensure its needs are met. one-bed with an additional sleeping nook. Meanpicture of directing the Studio and teaching!

To start, we can help folks realize that rural decline Our students faced a plethora of challenges, while, 5th-years gave Rev. Walker a new home that is simply a myth. The US rural population is actually including working and presenting their work out- uses a pole barn as a protective infrastructure for remarkably stable. Over the last 120 years, it has doors, the ever-present possibility of the Studio future home expansion. And for the Myers family, remained at around 60 million, or about the current shutting down because of the pandemic, and their 5th-years built a two-story home to expand into, with population of Italy. It’s just that, meanwhile, the urban enforced isolation in Hale County. And WOW, did an unfinished 2nd floor, taking cues from the Sears population has increased by over 200 million. they rise to those challenges! Their work ethic, curi- kit homes of the past.

The rural condition is not broken. These enviosity, discipline, enthusiasm, and energy have been We embraced the premise that rural housing is ronments are vibrant, wonderful places to live with off the charts. The spirit at the Studio has been the fundamentally different than urban housing. Rural potential for great opportunity. Folks here want and best I have witnessed for years, with everyone pulling housing is not something you buy to flip. It’s typically need access to resources—equitable education, in the same direction. a home to add onto as circumstances change, one housing, healthcare, connection—just the same as We’ve had time to reflect on our practices and you may live in all your life and pass to your children. urban folks. Let’s start by breaking down the artifimake a few tweaks. Calendar-wise, future Soup Often, house expansion is the toughest part: mak- cial barriers of urban and rural and support equity Roasts will be slightly more internal and academic ing an addition often creates a fragile moment for in infrastructure—yes, infrastructure—and choices so students get a solid critique at the year’s midpoint. the home. The Myers’ and Walker Homes—with two that work for the greater good to slow climate change.

The biggest change is the Friday night before Pig different approaches—both offer ways to expand As I sit here writing this in Newbern, my satellite interRoast. We’ll have an alumni celebration, which will and downsize without undermining the structural net provider’s dashboard proudly informs me that my allow visitors to enjoy the family-oriented graduation integrity and the external protective envelope. internet service is currently 1140.6% slower than the event the next day. national average. We must do better for rural places.

I’d like to give a shout out to Hale County Hospi- OUR RESEARCH ADVENTURES We need to act quickly, with comradery, to allow for tal for all their efforts this year under trying circum- I’d become frustrated with the number of layers a connected, well-informed citizenry. stances, providing much-needed support, COVID-19 we were starting to install on our houses, all with On the whole, out of this year’s unknowns and testing, and vaccinations. The events of the last few unknown sources and each solving a single problem. anxiety have come positivity, drive, and determinamonths have illustrated how lucky we are to have a We called it the layer cake or cluster duct. Over a few tion. We hone our focus as time progresses, asking superb small rural hospital and how important it is to Pabst Blue Ribbons with the brilliant and similarly new, emerging questions or shifting our approach, as this community. Another big shout out to the New- frustrated minds of Salmaan Craig, Kiel Moe, and we have done in the last few years. This year allowed bern Library, which is featured later in this newsletter. David Kennedy, we decided that McGill University us to take stock of how we can accomplish our goals The librarian, Barbara Williams, and the Newbern and Auburn Rural Studio should play together. under new constraints and how we can extend our Library Board are doing a fantastic job!

Kiel wanted to look more closely at embodied reach, our impact. We are humbled by both the energy and carbon footprints, David brought exper- potential and responsibility to change national and THE DRUMBEAT tise in mass timber, and Sal proposed mono-material international conversations around housing and hasWe started Fall 2020 in 100 degrees and 100% ventilation experiments to scale up. So was born a ten equity, all while chipping away at climate change. humidity, all working outside. We abandoned the science-based counterpoint to our prior practices These are enormous tasks for current and upcomvisitor-driven workshop, our weekly revolving door and a very direct challenge to our graduate students. ing generations of architects. The Studio feels more of visitors never came, and Halloween and Soup Partnering with McGill also meant the experiments together than ever, resolved to be a voice for our Roast were postponed, so we had to make our own could take place in parallel but very different climate community and for rural issues generally. drumbeat. We focused on keeping folks well, on zones. figuring out each other’s level of tolerance, and on We started with Sal’s challenge first, to look at My best wishes an extended “neck-down” project, whether help- the design of mass timber panels as heat exchang- Love and respect to you all ing ongoing projects like Horseshoe Courtyard or ers. The second was to understand and scientifically Please, stay safe and well working on other community needs. The impact was manage the full potential of internal thermal mass. two-fold: it scratched the students’ itch to build and We wanted to validate scaling rules for thermal mass it set habits for the year. We developed a rhythm of while showing that wood can perform as well as more working on-site in the cooler mornings, then tran- traditional thermal mass materials. The goal was to sitioning to cooler spaces for project design work build with more timber products or mono materials

Big Cheese Andrew Freear

Production Natalie Butts-Ball

Copy Editing Susan Youngblood, Michelle Sidler

Printing Montgomery Advertiser

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EVENTS & ALUMNI NEWS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

02 03 04 06 08

Letter from the Director: Andrew Freear

Events & Alumni News

Recently Completed Project: Horseshoe Courtyard

3rd-Year Studio: 20K Ophelia’s Home, History Class, & Woodshop Class

5th-Year Studio: Rev. Walker’s Home & Myers’ Home

10 11 12 13 14

Friend of the Studio: Remembering Dick Pigford & Special Past Project Feature: Newbern Library

Award, Exhibit, & Press

Consultant Profiles: Salmaan Craig, Kiel Moe, & David Kennedy

16 18 19

PAIR Team: The Work of the PAIR Grant Team

Staff Profile: Catherine Tabb & Cat’s Gazpacho Recipe

Rural Studio Farm & Harvest Chart

Master’s Studio: Thermal Mass & Buoyancy Ventilation Research Project

Front Porch Initiative: News from the Team, Partner Updates, Lessons Learned & Key Takeaways

UPCOMING EVENTS RURAL STUDIO ALUMNI LECTURES Friday, April 29, 2022

PIG ROAST & VALEDICTION CEREMONY

Saturday, April 30, 2022

ALUMNI NEWS LET’S CELEBRATE OUR ALUMNI

Since Rural Studio opened its doors in the Fall of 1993, more than 1,200 students have joined us in Hale County to work alongside our community clients. Wonder what some of our alums are doing now?

Let’s find out.

AMANDA LOPER

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) awarded Amanda Herron Loper ’05, Principal at David Baker Architects in Birmingham, AL, the 2021 AIA Young Architects Award. According to her bio, “Amanda Loper, AIA, LEED AP, is a Principal at David Baker Architects, a progressive, award-winning architecture and urban design firm known for combining social concern with a signature design character.

Amanda leads the southeastern office in Birmingham, Alabama, which she established in 2016. Her work integrates architecture and urban design so that each project is a ‘small but mighty act of urbanism.’”

CLEMENTINE BLAKEMORE

In the Fall of 2020, the Architects’ Journal recognized Clem Blakemore ’10 in their prestigious “40 under 40” list. According to her bio, “Clem is the director of Clementine Blakemore Architects, an emerging London-based practice committed to producing buildings that are inventive, inclusive and have a positive impact on the wider community. The practice

has delivered public projects for clients including the Design Museum and the Dorset Wildlife Trust, and recently completed the St. John’s Music Pavilion—a new classroom for a state primary school, which was shortlisted for a number of awards. She is currently working on the conversion of a series of derelict farm buildings in West Dorset into accessible holiday accommodation, alongside a community space, small educational farm and boardwalk, which will form part of a larger rewilding and rural tourism project due to open in Spring 2022.”

AMANDA LOPER

JONATHAN TATE

In March 2021, New Home for The First 72+, a project

by Jonathan Tate ’97 from OJT in New Orleans, LA, was awarded a Citation in the 68th Annual Progressive Architecture Awards. The team also received a 2021 AIA National Housing Award for their Bastion Community project. According to his bio, “Jonathan Tate is the founder and principal of OJT, an architecture and urban design studio based in New Orleans. Since its founding in 2011, OJT has received numerous recognitions and awards, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award and several AIA National Honor awards, for work spanning housing, hospitality, cultural institutions, education and architectural planning.”

CLEMENTINE BLAKEMORE

Shout out to a few of our very recent grads, Anna, Jake, and Cory!

Anna Halepaska ’19, ’20 is continuing her breathing wall research from her time at Rural Studio to complete a PhD with professor Salmaan Craig at McGill University. Jake Elbrecht ’19, ’20 just completed a one-year research fellowship focused on “Wood: Past and Future” at Eskew Dumez Ripple in New Orleans, LA, and has accepted a new research position at the Council on Tall Buildings and the Urban Habitat in Chicago, IL, to study steel-timber composite structural systems. This summer Cory Subasic ’20, ’21 was selected for the Ghost Residency and is now working with Brian MacKay-Lyons at the Ghost Architectural Laboratory in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Layout Tatum Design

Illustrations Courtney Windham

JONATHAN TATE

THE NEWBERN TIMES, VOL. 10

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RECENTLY COMPLETED PROJECT

HORSESHOE COURTYARD Project Horseshoe Farm has created a support network that builds on the strengths of local communities, serving youths and adults at their newly renovated headquarters, the “Old Greensboro Hotel” building. Part of their mission—to improve the health and quality of life of their vulnerable neighbors—will be supported by the new courtyard.

The Horseshoe Courtyard is a shaded outdoor space created by a series of strategically placed vegetated metal screens and trees that complement the nineteenth-century masonry building. As one enters the courtyard from Beacon Alley, the tree canopy overhead casts dappled shadows onto the gravel slate beneath. The crunch of gravel transitions to softer sounds of pavement and brick when one passes through the entry gate and vine-filled screens into a long narrow porch. This porch allows people to sit and observe happenings in the ”quiet” and “activity” spaces. The quiet space is an intimate area defined by a grove of trees forming a low ceiling plane that slips over the vine screens, providing privacy from the alley. Under the canopy, one can sit on benches and view programs occurring in the activity space, where 18-foot screens surround the reclaimed-brick pad. The screens provide shade and texture to the courtyard and fragrance when the vines bloom. Nested into the building is a second short but deep porch. This porch doubles as a stage and is accessible from the main hallway of the building.

This past year, with the help of their client, Project Horseshoe Farm Fellows, and Rural Studio students and staff, the team was able to add vegetation, electrical, and benches, while finishing up ground surfaces. Finally, after four years, the project is now complete! Teammates Caleb R. Munson and Claudia Paz Melendez were extraordinary students. They dedicated four years of their lives to this project and were loved by everyone. Project Horseshoe Farm and Rural Studio will celebrate the grand opening of the project with a ribbon cutting ceremony in the Spring of 2022.

STUDENTS Caleb R. Munson, Claudia Paz Melendez, Zack Cundey, & Claire Kubilins FACULTY Andrew Freear, Steve Long, Xavier Vendrell LOCATION Greensboro, AL CLIENT Project Horseshoe Farm PROJECT BLOG LINK aub.ie/courtyard PROJECT COMPLETED July 2021

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RECENTLY COMPLETED PROJECT

Q&A WITH DR. JOHN DORSEY

DIRECTOR OF PROJECT HORSESHOE FARM HOW WILL YOU USE THE COURTYARD SPACE? The courtyard space is going to be such a key part of the Horseshoe Farm community center. We see it as a connector and extension of all of the spaces at the center. It is easy to imagine it becoming a hub within the hub where we have exercise groups, social activities and games, music, performances, and other activities. Having such a beautiful oasis within the community center is also going to be wonderful for some of our participants who struggle with mental illness. I have found with so many people who struggle with mental illness, being outside and surrounded by the tranquility of plants and greenery is enormously therapeutic.

In addition to all of the possibilities it creates for our community center programs, one of the most exciting things to think about is how the courtyard is going to be used by the broader community. We hope and believe having such a beautiful outdoor space downtown will open up many possibilities for Greensboro and help build an even stronger bridge between our participants, our activities, and the broader community.

HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC CHANGED THE NEED FOR THE PROJECT?

We couldn’t have asked for better timing for the completion of the courtyard. It has been heartbreaking seeing many of our participants around town, and having so many ask when we are going to be able to start programs at the center again. We have begun transitioning back and resuming activities and programs this summer. We plan on doing this with baby steps, and the courtyard gives us a great opportunity to start this transition with outdoor programs. Even as we begin to move programs back inside, having the courtyard gives us so much more flexibility and space and allows us to keep people from getting too piled up on top of one another in the indoor spaces.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT THE COURTYARD? There are so many things that I love about the courtyard that it is hard to know where to begin. The project is stunning in so many ways, but I do love seeing the complex shadows that are cast in the afternoons on a sunny clear day, the coolness under the canopy of the crepe myrtles, and the wonderful fragrance when the star jasmine are in bloom.

TELL US ABOUT AN UNEXPECTED SURPRISE IN THE PROJECT. One of the really nice surprises about the project is how beautiful the courtyard is at night. I remember after Caleb and Claudia had spent a long day working to mock up the lighting for the courtyard, I grabbed some soft tacos from Mi Tenampa, and the three of us sat down in the courtyard to eat. It was so peaceful sitting outside under the stars seeing the warm glow created by the mocked-up lighting reflecting off of the bricks in the stage area. The lighting provided just enough of a glow to appreciate the trees and vines. With Caleb’s portable speaker playing some soft background music, the space was magical. When we started the project, I don’t think I appreciated how much potential the courtyard had and how beautiful the courtyard could be in the evenings.

We are so grateful to Caleb, Claudia, Zack, and Claire for creating such a beautiful project. I don’t think I have seen a more beautiful courtyard anywhere I have been, and we are so excited to see the wonderful impact the project is going to have for our participants, our organization, and our whole community. Thank you!

An inviting, safe, and flexible outdoor space for life-enhancement programs at Project Horseshoe Farm’s headquarters in Greensboro, Alabama

COURTYARD BY THE NUMBERS

1,564

22

121

1,373

4,000+

57

7,051

15,907

PERFORATIONS IN METAL

OLD BRICKS CLEANED AND INSTALLED

TONS OF SLATE

CUBIC YARDS OF CONCRETE

TRIPS TO LOWE’S

LINEAR FEET OF RECYCLED PLASTIC ROPE

DAYS OF THE PROJECT

POUNDS OF STEEL

THE NEWBERN TIMES, VOL. 10

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3RD-YEAR STUDIO

3RD-YEARS The homes we build for our clients help us understand the challenges of housing affordability in broader contexts.

20K OPHELIA’S HOME LOCATION Newbern, AL INSTRUCTORS Emily McGlohn & Chelsea Elcott FALL 2019 Adam Davis, Anna Claire Priest, Brenton Smith, Caitlyn Biffle, Davis Benfer, Emily Davis, Gemma Ramon Centelles, Hailey Osborne, Han Li, Ignasi Vendrell I Simon, Laurel Holloway, Oliver Higgins, Yi Xuan Teo SPRING 2020 Adam Boutwell, Alex Harvill, Daniel Bur ton, Elizabeth Brandebourg, Elle Whitehurst, Hannah Moates, Jackie Rosborough, Jasvandhan Coimbatore Upendranath, Joo Young Lim, Lauren Deck, Luke Killough, Shijin Ding FALL 2020 Ann Sheldon, Benjamin Willcockson, Carla Slabber, Christina Devries, Deliang Chen, Ethan Mejia, Mattheas Repsher SPRING 2021 Ashley Wilson, Austin Black, Drew-Haley Smith, James Foo, Juyeon Han, Kirby Spraggins, Logan Lee, Sadie McIntyre, Wendy Webb BLOG LINK aub.ie/ophelia PROJECT COMPLETED May 2021

The 20K Ophelia’s Home is finished! Started in 2019, we students develop a design program used to fine-tune paused the project during the pandemic. Most of the one of the prototypes for construction. With Ophelia’s walls were framed when classes went remote in March Home (a version of 20K Joanne’s House), students of 2020. Patiently, Ophelia waited for us to return. Last designed a “nook” in the living room for her daybed. If Fall, 2020, we uncovered the floor platform, reset the this version were built for someone else, it could be a walls, and proceeded to build. Roof trusses were in home office, a study space, or a quarter bedroom for place before the winter break, and during the Spring extended-stay guests. The adjusted prototype is then 2021, the house was completed. In total, over two years, added back to the catalog for the Front Porch team 41 3rd-year students designed and built this house. to study and use in the future, adding new knowledge We’re thankful for their dedication and enthusiasm! to the feedback loop with the Front Porch Initiative.

The 3rd-Year Program works closely with the Front Third-year students also study alternative assembly Porch Initiative to help tackle the housing affordability details, foundation strategies, and cladding options. crisis. On the ground in Newbern, students select one We appreciate our clients so much. They welcome of the previously designed 20K House prototypes to us into their homes and lives so we can learn about build for their client. Selection is based on site analysis, and teach architecture. The homes we build for them space available to build, and most importantly, the help us understand the challenges of housing affordclient. Interviews help students better understand the ability in broader contexts, with the ultimate goal of needs and desires of the client. From the interviews, helping others find healthy, safe, and beautiful homes.

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3RD-YEAR STUDIO

Watercolors by 3rd-year student Juyeon Han

Students were challenged to be empathetic toward housing solutions of the past and, of course, of the present.

HISTORY CLASS INSTRUCTOR Dick Hudgens

Like many, Dick Hudgens had to adjust his class to COVID-19 restrictions. In the past, his classes took field trips to historic houses and structures within 120 miles of Newbern. This year, distant trips were out, so the students tackled more on-site projects and visited

WOODSHOP INSTRUCTORS Steve Long & Chelsea Elcott

Another year has come and gone for the Rural Studio Woodshop class. This year, we challenged the students to only use the basic tools that we have on hand.

The fall semester explored the fundamentals of woodworking through a series of small, individual projects that focused on specific aspects of woodworking.

The projects ranged from creating a kitchen cutting board to sculpting wood by means of steam bending.

The class culminated in creating a task light or lamp using wood.

The spring semester students designed and built cabinet storage for their studio project, 20K Ophelia’s Home. The students worked in small teams to create kitchen and bathroom cabinets and storage for the bedroom, utility room, and “nook.”

local houses. They toured buildings—opened exclusively for class—and after touring, drew floor plans and building sections or elevations. Dick adapted the watercolor component of the class to relate to the 3rd-Year Studio house project. Instead of a Beaux Arts–type watercolor of a local historical building, they produced a local landscape watercolor and a smallscale detailed watercolor of subjects of each student’s choosing. The objective was to become more familiar with local color and textures, as well as shade and shadow techniques. Also, students made a watercolor of 20K Ophelia’s Home, including interior perspectives.

This exercise sharpened students’ watercolor skills while also demonstrating to the client different interior

and exterior color options for her new home.

For the Newbern classes, Dick also introduced design problems, three in the fall and two in the spring.

Each exercise consisted of selecting a site and designing a house and associated out buildings for a family.

Students offered hand-drawn solutions to each problem in storyboard format. The goal was to introduce students to a universal design problem constrained by the limited resources at hand. We asked, how do you maximize available resources to make a home as safe and comfortable as possible? This question endures regardless of generation and era. Students were challenged to be empathetic toward housing solutions of the past and, of course, of the present.

THE NEWBERN TIMES, VOL. 10

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5TH-YEAR STUDIO

5TH-YEARS The latest house designs in the 5th-Year Studio are a response to the phenomenon of home expansion that is common in rural areas: instead of selling and moving to bigger homes, homeowners often expand their current houses. Unfortunately, additions can undermine the original home and become fallible points in the roof and the foundation, often leading to catastrophic failure. Unlike in urban conditions, many families in rural communities don’t buy homes to sell later and build wealth. Instead, rural homes are often a family’s home for a lifetime and consequently need to adapt as a family’s needs change. Rural Studio is excited to build on this provocative exploration in rural housing.

REV. WALKER’S HOME LOCATION Newbern, AL STUDENT TEAM Addie Harchelro ad, B e c c a Wig gs , Ge orge S laug h ter, & P aul Fallin INSTRUCTORS Andrew Freear & Steve Long BLOG LINK aub.ie/revwalker PROJECT COMPLETED September 2021

This 5th-year team provided Rev. Walker a large post-structured roof (like a pole barn) over a continuous sheltered slab foundation to protect and facilitate additions in all weather.

The big roof celebrates outdoor living space that can adapt to meet changing household needs.

In the primary indoor living space, a double height volume offers access to a loft, which is above a generous galley kitchen and bathroom.

The home functions as a springboard for creative future expansions in the outdoor living space, encouraging the client to make a place that is distinctly their own. The separate enclosures allow the owner to make additions while minimizing disruption to living spaces.

A rural home that offers outdoor living and opportunities for expansion

5TH-YEAR PROJECTS

MYERS’ HOME LOCATION Newbern, AL STUDENT TEAM Judith Seaman, Madeline Ray, Riley Boles, & Robbin Reese INSTRUCTORS Andrew Freear & Steve Long BLOG LINK aub.ie/myers PROJECT COMPLETED December 2021

The Myers’ Home is designed to be easily adapted from two rooms to five as the demographics of a family change. This 5th-year team was inspired by American residential “kit home” precedents: the regional Jim Walter Homes and ubiquitous Sears Modern Homes by Sears, Roebuck and Co., which were built as “shells” with unfinished interior space.

This design for the Myers family uses an attic truss and non-load bearing interior walls for an adaptable ground floor plan and attic space. The home offers a robust fixed centralized core connecting the house vertically and combines the stair, bathroom, laundry, utilities, and attic plumbing hookups, which organizes the plan and acts as a spatial divider. The ground floor provides two designated sleeping rooms and a large flexible social space that can offer a variety of uses and be changed to adapt to the needs of future inhabitants (including offering more sleeping rooms).

The second floor allows space for more sleeping rooms, a bathroom, and storage.

A two-story “shell” home that can easily expand for generations The long front porch engages both the landscape and multiple spaces in the home but is structurally separate from the main shell. Keeping the home’s primary structure inside the outer envelope, with low maintenance zero-eave conditions, prioritizes the longevity and lifespan of this “generational home.”

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THE NEWBERN TIMES, VOL. 10

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FRIEND OF THE STUDIO & PAST PROJECT FEATURE

REMEMBERING DICK PIGFORD

RICHARD “DICK” PIGFORD

The Rural Studio community lost a dear friend and ally in 2019 with the passing of Richard “Dick” Pigford. A native of Alabama, he served in the Vietnam war from 1968 to 1970 and then returned home to study under D.K. Ruth. Alongside Samuel Mockbee, Dick learned both the profession of architecture and the value of civic participation. After a successful career at several firms, he was the founding partner of ArchitectureWorks in Birmingham, AL, in 1995. Over the years, ArchitectureWorks routinely hired Rural Studio graduates, who still make up most of their architectural team.

Dick’s contributions to Rural Studio were numerous, including service on both the Rural Studio Advisory Board and the School of Architecture Advisory Board. In the Rural Studio community, Dick is perhaps best known for his annual trip to Neck Down. Each year, he and the entire firm made the trip to Hale County, lending a hand where it was needed. He applied this same spirit of giving to his home city of Birmingham by co-founding the Tuesday Group, a collaboration of civic professionals who help revitalize Birmingham’s lowand middle-income communities. For his service to the profession and the broader community, Dick was elevated to the prestigious College of Fellows at the American Institute of Architects in 2019.

“Dick was an extraordinary man with incredible empathy, grace, and dignity: a generous and gentle soul who we miss dearly.” -ANDREW FREEAR

NEWBERN LIBRARY

Photo by Jean W atson

In 2013, four 5th-year students transformed Newbern’s old bank building into a new public library for the community. The Newbern Public Library has become a resource-rich social center, thanks to the commitment and dedication of their extraordinary board members and community volunteers.

Since opening the doors eight years ago, the Newbern Public Library Board and our town’s steadfast librarian, Barbara Williams, have received several grants for expanding community members’ access to technology, art, and information.

The library has also supported many enrichment programs, including outreach from organizations like the McWane Science Center and Moundville Archaeological Park, lectures and presentations, programming in arts for children and adults, workshops on special topics (e.g., photography), and club and health programs. It’s been such a vibrant center that we’re sure we’re leaving something out!

This little library has grown to 414 card-carrying members who have access to a collection of more than 5,685 books. The Library Board continues to update the shelves and provide our neighbors access to computers, tablets, printing, and free high-speed, fiber-optic internet. These days, the citizens of Newbern can even stop by and use the library’s new 3D printer!

Through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Newbern Public Library applied for and accepted multiple grants to help provide information to the community as well as PPE and other safety precautions, which kept the library’s vital resources available to all.

The Newbern Public Library is financially supported by generous donors who back the non-profit organizations’ mission to “serve our community as a stimulating place for lifelong learning by providing materials and services for enrichment and enjoyment.”

Newbern Public Library Board Members: President Mary Jane Everett, Vice President Angela Cabil, Treasurer Betty Jean Tims, Secretary Carolyn Walthall, Librarian Barbara Williams, Freda Braxton, Felicia Briggins, Jean Watson, Kaleda Williams-Zanders, and Andrew Freear.

Photo by Timothy Hursley

SNAPSHOT EIGHT YEARS DOWN THE ROAD

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AWARDS, EXHIBITS, & PRESS

AWARDS & EXHIBITS ANDREW FREEAR HONORED BY THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN In recognition of his contributions to arts and architecture, Andrew Freear has been selected as a member of the National Academy of Design. As the oldest artist-run organization in the United States, the National Academy of Design advocates for the value of arts and architecture. Since their founding in 1825, nearly 2,400 members have been elected. Freear joins more than 400 living members, including architects Marlon Blackwell, Elizabeth Diller, Billie Tsien, Tod Williams, David Adjaye, and Renzo Piano, as well as artists Richard Serra, Robert Irwin, Yoko Ono, and Claes Oldenburg. He is the only architect elected this year along with seven visual artists. He was inducted as a National Academician on October 27, 2021 in a virtual event via Zoom.

A SOUTH FORTY: CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH Rural Studio is honored and humbled to be part of the exhibition, A South Forty: Contemporary Architecture and Design in the American South, at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. Sponsored by the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at University of Arkansas, modus studio, and the Oxford American, the exhibit features about 40 architectural practices, including great and beloved friends such as Marlon Blackwell, Frank Harmon, Steve Dumez, Anne Marie Duvall, and Roy Decker.

Rural Studio’s work taps into the exhibition’s celebration of Southern regional architecture and design since 1990. Featured in A South Forty is a series of projects in the heart of Newbern: the Town Hall, the Firehouse, and the Library. These projects echo the exhibit’s expanded focus on the rural and on how contemporary civic design practices invigorate communities and landscapes. A South Forty celebrates the intimate, reciprocal relationship among a place, its people, and architectural work. Accordingly, the Studio’s exhibit explores place and its role in human connections: meaningful spaces reflect their rootage in both the soil and the structures that soil supports.

Photo by Riccardo Grassetti

PRESS Architecture Students at Rural Studio Build Their First Open-Ended Kit House | STIRworld.com | Web | August 20, 2021 Beyond the Shotgun Shack: How Architects are Rethinking Southern Buildings for the 21st Century | Fast Company | Web | August 11, 2021

A Tale of Four Tiny Homes| Dothan Eagle | Web | February 25, 2021 Chipola Teams Up With Auburn and Habitat To Build Tiny Homes | Dothan Eagle | Web | February 24, 2021 Rural Studio and the Front Porch Initiative: What Good Design Can Afford | HAC Rural Voices | Web | December 2020

Summer 2021 | Monograph, APT | TV, Web | June 30, 2021 Chipola College Receives $1.7 Million Grant to Support Construction and Welding Program | MyPanhandle.com aka WMBB-TV | Web | April 29, 2021 Shaw Recognizes More Organizations Putting People at the Heart of Sustainability | Shaw Industries | Web | March 17, 2021 Shaw Sustain[Human]Ability® Leadership Recognition Program Highlights Nine Organizations’ People-Centric Approach to Sustainability | Shaw Industries | Web | March 15, 2021 Non-Profit Works Alongside Metro’s Affordable Housing Task Force to Expand Housing Options| WKRN.com | Web | March 02, 2021

“As the South faces increasing threats from extreme weather, sea level rise, and climate change, architects [like those at Rural Studio] are setting new standards for how architecture can help even small communities build for an uncertain future.” – FAST COMPANY

Chipola Area Habitat for Humanity Partners with Chipola College and Auburn University Rural Studio to Build New Homes | MyPanhandle.com | Web | February 25, 2021 New Affordable Housing Coming to Jackson County | WJHG News Channel 7 | Web | February 25, 2021 New Affordable Housing Coming To Jackson County | WTVY.com – News4 | Web | February 25, 2021

4 Tiny Houses Designed By Auburn Students Bring Affordable Housing Initiative To Nashville | Chipola Area Habitat for Humanity | Web | December 04, 2020 Habitat to Build 4 ‘Tiny Homes’ | Dothan Eagle | Web | November 17, 2020 Chipola Street Development: Site Visit | Chipola Area Habitat for Humanity | Web | November 05, 2020 Eastern Shore Gets New Perspective on Affordable Housing | Eastern Shore Post | Web | October 08, 2020 Newbern Library: Changing Spaces | Book by Julie Knutson | September 22, 2020 Making Home Happen | Good Grit Magazine | Web | September 22, 2020

Revolutionizing Affordable Housing in Rural Alabama | HUD User – Cast Study | Web | September 2020 Auburn University Rural Studio Brings Architectural Vision to Alabama’s Black Belt | Alabama News Center | Web | August 03, 2020 Holistic Solutions for Home Ownership | Architect | Web | July 02, 2020

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CONSULTANT PROFILES

DAVID, SALMAAN, & KIEL David Kennedy, Salmaan Craig, and Kiel Moe, our research partners from Arkansas, and McGill University in Montreal, Canada, respectively, guide the Studio in investigating holistic and passive comfort systems, using deep knowledge of the life cycle of materials. They are developing ways to mitigate the construction industry’s carbon emissions by harnessing the potential of low-carbon materials, such as timber. The aim is to simplify building envelopes using a single mono material while asking that material to perform multiple functions, such as acting as the structure, insulation, finish or even as a heat exchanger and temperature control.

DAVID KENNEDY

SALMAAN CRAIG

KIEL MOE

David Kennedy, a registered architect and mass timber expert, is a self-proclaimed “Wood Anatomist Fan Boy” whose transdisciplinary research ranges from forest ecology to wood joinery detailing. After studying under Kiel Moe at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, he became an assistant professor in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction at Auburn University, where he collaborated with the School of Forestry & Wildlife Sciences. Rural Studio will continue to benefit from his design input, technical skill, and networking abilities as he begins his journey this fall at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, working with the Urban Design Build Studio and the Ross and Mary Whipple Family Forest Education Center. WHERE ARE YOU FROM, AND HOW DID YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH TIMBER? I’m from Pittsburgh, PA. I grew up surrounded by the irreversible effects of coal on the land, water, air, and people caught up in its economic slide. Simultaneously, I was building barns with my stepdad. We’d use wood recycled from other barns or unrelated sources or even milled on site. Wood is just dead tree, but it has this generous vitality to it, a willingness to be whatever you need it to be. Surrounded by a commodity that only seemed to take, wood was one that gave. I was disillusioned with the negative impacts of architecture when I first came across mass timber, and I saw it as a way to do what I loved in a way that was fundamentally positive. Now, I think the more we know about it, the better equipped we are to leverage its social, economic, and ecological benefits. That’s why I look at it every way I know how, as deeply as possible.

THE GRADUATE STUDENTS JOKE THAT “DAVID KENNEDY KNOWS EVERYONE!” HOW DO YOU STAY CONNECTED WITH SO MANY PEOPLE ACROSS VARYING DISCIPLINES AND STATE LINES? I have a really cool network of folks interested in timber architecture. We’re all excited about it, and we talk a lot. Most of our conversations do nothing more than share thoughts and expand the network. I think it’s important to dedicate time to this; not every conversation with a colleague needs to be transactional. I have also sent 13,100 emails in the past year. AS AN EDUCATOR, WHAT’S ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU WANT STUDENTS TO KNOW ABOUT BEING AN ARCHITECT TODAY? In the building professions, the prevailing reason for any mode of operation is: “we’ve always done it this way.”

Architects, engineers, developers, contractors—they all share this damaging, illogical complacency. I think young architects should reject this attitude from their superiors and feel empowered to make decisions based on what they know to be true, not “what’s been done.”

After all, they are the ones who [will] have to live with the world they’re building.

Besides being the Studio’s favorite carbon-sequestering, material-system-integrating, adaptive-comfort-specializing genius, Salmaan Craig is an engineer, educator, parent, and the author of several published peer-reviewed research papers. With a degree in product design and an engineering doctorate from Brunel University in the UK, Sal has worked as a facade engineer for Buro Happold, where he developed material systems for extreme climates, such as the multi-layer dome of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. After taking his talents to Foster + Partners, Sal taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and is now an assistant professor at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada.

Sal is continually developing ways for low-carbon building materials to perform more functions, giving designers holistic, data-driven approaches to sustainable building; the Mass Timber Breathing Wall and Thermal Mass and Buoyancy Ventilation projects are just two examples of his ongoing research initiatives. WITH THE NUMBER OF GROUND-BREAKING PROJECTS YOU HAVE GOING ON AT ANY GIVEN TIME, HOW DO YOU BALANCE IT ALL AND STILL STAY SHARP ENOUGH TO DO QUICK MENTAL THERMODYNAMICS? I guess I have just thought about certain thermal relationships for long enough that I recognize patterns when I see them, more quickly than folks who are just starting out. THE STUDENTS THINK YOU’RE A REAL-LIFE SUPERHERO; WHO DO YOU LOOK UP TO? Andrew Freear was slightly taller than me last time I checked. FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME, WHAT IS ADAPTIVE COMFORT, AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO DESIGN TODAY? Thermal comfort depends on hard physics, but it is also a state of mind. It is influenced by the seasons and by how much agency we give occupants. For example, folks will happily tolerate warmer temperatures in the summer if they are free to open a window and feel the breeze. ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) compiled tons of data on effects like these and encoded them in a new design standard called “adaptive comfort” for naturally ventilated buildings. It tells us when we don’t need air conditioning, so long as buildings are designed appropriately.

The new criteria for what is “cool enough” will blow your HVAC-dependent minds! WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE NOT DOING EVERYTHING? Nothing. Ha. Actually, meditation is pretty hard. But, honestly, all day, I work to make space to hang out with my four-year-old daughter. WHAT ARE YOUR ORIGINS? WHERE DO YOU CONSIDER HOME? I’m a Londoner. It’s a long story. Happy to elaborate over a beer. :) WHY DID YOU GET INTO THIS FIELD OF RESEARCH? Because my undergrad professor explained the science of climate heating and walked us through the implications for the vulnerable people of society. And because I got obsessed with the idea of building skins that adapt thermally and all the strategies we could copy from nature.

Kiel Moe pushes the Studio to consider design and construction through the lens of material and building life cycles. As an author of several books, a practicing registered architect, and an educator, he challenges conventional commercialized notions of sustainability. Kiel has taught at the University of Illinois Chicago, Syracuse University, Northeastern University, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he was the Director of the Energy, Environments, and Design research unit.

Today he holds the Gerald Sheff Chair in Architecture in McGill University, Montreal, Canada, where he continues researching and teaching the ecological and socioeconomic impacts of architecture.

YOU’VE HAD AN INFLUENCE ON SO MANY STUDENTS AT SO MANY DIFFERENT UNIVERSITIES. WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU TEACH THAT YOU HOPE STICKS WITH THE NEW GENERATION OF DESIGNERS? What architects call energy is usually just fuel. The energetics of architecture are much more vast, and interesting, than hydrocarbon fuel efficiency.

YOUR WORK INCLUDES EVERYTHING FROM BOOKS TO BUILDINGS; HOW DO YOU TIE RESEARCH AND CONSTRUCTION TOGETHER? From an ethical point of view, building without research seems just as hazardous to me as research without building. YOU ARE A DESIGNER AND A BUILDER; WHAT ARE YOUR MOST RECENT PROJECTS, AND WHAT PROJECTS DO YOU HAVE GOING ON RIGHT NOW? I keep trying to get small building right, with limited success. Right now, I am working on a 400 sq ft cabin and a 1,000 sq ft house.

That said, we just finished a larger public urban sauna in Portland, Maine, and a barn renovation in Vermont.

“From an ethical point of view, building without research seems just as hazardous to me as research without building.”

-KIEL MOE

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MASTER’S STUDIO

THERMAL MASS & BUOYANCY VENTILATION RESEARCH PROJECT LOCATION Newbern, AL STUDENT TEAM Cory Subasic, Jeff Jeong, Livia Barrett, & Rowe Price INSTRUCTORS Andrew Freear, Steve Long, David Kennedy

with McGill University faculty Salmaan Craig and Kiel Moe BLOG LINK aub.ie/TMBV PROJECT COMPLETED December 2021

Rural Studio is investigating the design of responsible comfort systems for buildings. One part of this larger research is the Thermal Mass & Buoyancy Ventilation Research Project (TMBV), a collaboration with McGill University.

This project examines building strategies for ideal passive ventilation and temperature control. Dense building materials, like concrete and timber, are said to have more thermal mass than others; they have greater ability to absorb, store, and release heat. In short, the rules for a system determine the size of the mass materials, harnessing the differences in temperature between the air and mass to control convection cycles.

This research uses mathematical rules to optimize the proportion of internal thermal mass’s thickness (i.e., a dense material’s wall thickness) and surface area with ventilation openings. The resulting proportions are a starting point for design because they account for schematic elements such as building height and occupant load. Prior to this research, mathematical rules have only been tested on small models—never before at full scale. This research will confirm or improve the rules, which provide a powerful shortcut for creating climate-resilient buildings.

WHAT ARE THE TMBV TEST BUILDINGS?

The students began by collecting data from small-scale experiments that validated the thermal mass scaling rules. Next, they designed two Test Buildings that apply the strategy at full scale. The buildings, located on the Morrisette property, will, in the long term, house 3rd-year students. The design also creates a experiential space below each building, known as the Cooling Porch, which demonstrates to future designers and clients the validity of the passive system.

The interiors, one lined with concrete and the other with plywood thermal mass, are designed to be flexible for future experiments that test variations.

When the TMBV scaling rules are applied, wood—a biogenic and locally available material—will create the same amount of airflow and temperature damping as concrete, a typical thermal mass material often used in building construction, but not as sustainable and renewable as wood.

The buildings are an investment in the Studio’s future lines of inquiry into using passive cooling systems such as thermal mass and morphed surfaces.

TEST BUILDING SECTION DIAGRAM 1 C himneys 2 S tructurally insulated panels (SIPs) 3 C oncrete panels

4 P lywood panels 5 C ooling Porch

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FRONT PORCH INITIATIVE

NEWS FROM THE TEAM While the Front Porch Initiative team continues to build relationships with housing providers and advocacy groups, the thrust of the past year has been moving projects from development into construction. With four homes completed in Nashville, TN, four underway in Marianna, FL, and one home under construction in Johnson City, TN, it has been a rewarding year seeing the homes take shape.

The Front Porch Initiative’s mission is to expand the impact of Rural Studio’s it also revealed the need to expand the local workforce trained to rebuild after housing research by working with housing providers outside of West Alabama. storm events. Enter Chipola College: In Fall 2020, Chipola College launched Our footprint is beginning to spread across the Southeast with active housing their Building Construction Technology program, designed to train students for provider partners in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and South Carolina. jobs in the construction industry. Carmen Smith (CAHFH Executive Director) Additionally, although the pandemic halted many of our travels, we continued and Darwin Gilmore (Dean of Workforce & Economic Development) worked to hold virtual meetings, deliver digital presentations, and write papers to get together to develop a strategy whereby the Chipola College Construction the word out about our developing research.

Tech students received credit hours toward their construction certifications Flying around the internet, we presented at the AIA/ACSA Intersections by building CAHFH homes. This also filled a gap in CAHFH’s volunteer labor Research Conference, EEBA High Performance Home Summit, and Freddie base, which was stifled by the pandemic.

Mac Rural Research Symposium, just to name a few. Each of these conferences Over the course of the spring, CAHFH with Chipola College framed up expands our network of friends and resources. And, even more excitingly, we two Rural Studio homes—Buster’s House and Dave’s House—and they broke were able to co-present with our Field Test Partners to speak collectively about ground on an additional two homes—Joanne’s and Sylvia’s—this fall. While the shared values in our work. On that note, we’d like to highlight three of our the homes are under construction, CAHFH is also working with Regions Bank fabulous partners and the projects we’re building together: and Fannie Mae to explore opportunities for expanding CAHFH’s capacity to provide homes while maintaining affordability in financing for the homeowners.

AHR WHARF AVENUE

Affordable Housing Resources (AHR) in Nashville works diligently to provide opportunities for affordable homeownership in an increasingly unaffordable city. With an award from the Barnes Fund, Eddie Latimer (AHR’s CEO) acquired two adjoining vacant parcels in the city’s Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood.

Using Nashville’s progressive R-6 “detached duplex” zoning and a site plan developed by Gresham Smith, they were able to develop four one-bedroom homes across the two parcels. The homes, all of which have sold, were estimated to have a principal, interest, taxes, and insurance cost (PITI) of around $900/month. By comparison, the average cost of rent in Nashville in 2020 was $1,390/month.

Built with energy efficiency in mind, each of the homes has a Home Energy Rating System (HERS) score between 51 and 54, with energy bills estimated to average around $70/month. Barbara Harper Latimer, owner of Honeybee Builders, worked with Jonathan Gensler from Revive Energy to test the airtightness of the home at key points during construction. For all you fellow building science nerds out there, the final blower door tests for the homes came in between 2.7 and 3.5 ACH50 (air changes per hour at 50 pascals pressure differential). Nashville required 7.0 ACH50 max when we built the houses; they now require 3.0 ACH50. We celebrated the dedication of the homes on June 29, and we look forward to working together with AHR on more projects in the future!

CAHFH CHIPOLA STREET

The partnership with Chipola Area Habitat for Humanity (CAHFH) is bringing together several pieces in the housing affordability puzzle. CAHFH’s mission to increase equitable access to homeownership was intensified by Hurricane Michael, which damaged 70–75% of the area’s housing stock in fall 2018. In addition to the storm exacerbating the area’s housing inventory deficit,

EASTERN EIGHT CDC UNAKA AVENUE

Eastern Eight Community Development Corporation (CDC) works across eight counties in Northeast Tennessee to fulfill housing needs for low-to moderate-income families. In its first project with us, Eastern Eight CDC is developing a single house as infill in an established neighborhood in Johnson City. They would like to use the house as a pilot to garner interest in small, efficient homes. Eastern Eight CDC has contracted with Appalachia Service Project (ASP) to construct the home. ASP has been performing home repairs in Central Appalachia since 1969 and has also launched a New Build program, which harnesses both local subcontractors and volunteers for construction.

The project will be the first version of Sylvia’s House built outside of West Alabama. Stay tuned to our blog for updates on this and all of our other projects!

SHOUT OUTS

We’d like to thank the team who made the AHR Wharf Avenue project happen: Eddie Latimer, Dan Eaton, and the entire staff at AHR; Barbara Harper Latimer from Honeybee Builders; and Jonathan Gensler from Revive Energy.

We’re enjoying our continuing work on Chipola Street with the CAHFH and Chipola College teams: Carmen Smith and her incredible team at Chipola Area Habitat for Humanity, including her ace construction site supervisors Isaiah Morgan and Pete Fulton; Darwin Gilmore and Scott Phelps, along with their Chipola College Building Construction Technology students; Jane and Randy Conn of ES Green & Company; and Darius Grimes of Disaster-Smart Consulting.

We appreciate the steadfast leadership on Unaka Street of Sherry Trent and Mindy Bowman of Eastern Eight CDC and the hard work of the ASP team, including Chris Dolph, Zeb Volpe, and Julie Thompson.

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FRONT PORCH INITIATIVE

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED

The Front Porch Initiative team has learned a lot over the past four years. We have learned about working with Field Test Partners outside of West Alabama to deliver Rural Studio homes. By working with stakeholders in the housing ecosystem—housing providers, lenders, insurers, policymakers, and more—we’ve learned about which elements of the system are universal and which are specific. And we learn something new every time we participate in a webinar, have a meeting, or make a site visit. But at the same time as we gather knowledge working with external partners, we’ve also learned something about how we work internally.

Front Porch Initiative is one piece of Rural Studio’s housing affordability work—an endeavor that spans the three missions of the university: teaching, research, and outreach. So, let’s dive in and take a look at what we’ve learned about how we work and how that process informs what we’ve learned with our regional and national partners.

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED ABOUT HOW WE WORK

locally, many learned concepts translate to rural communities across the country. Through targeted field tests, pilot projects, and studies with external partners, the Front Porch Initiative is able both to broaden the housing affordability research and to articulate how local strategies translate to regional and national contexts. The teaching activities at Rural Studio and the research activities of the Front Porch Initiative have a relationship defined by reciprocal knowledge building and information sharing.

Front Porch Initiative both is informed by and informs the applied research on the ground conducted by students at Rural Studio. Between the 5th-year and the 3rd-year students, Rural Studio has developed a prototype/variation feedback loop that informs the 20K Project. Students in their 5th year design and build home prototypes. These prototypes are informed by design briefs that are based on observation of need, aggregated data, and experience gained from preceding student work. Third-year students, by contrast, begin with a client and, through a series of analytical exer- WHAT WE’RE LEARNING THROUGH THE FRONT PORCH INITIATIVE cises, choose an existing prototype and modify it to suit the specific client As we work outside of the context of West Alabama, the Front Porch Initiaand site. The Front Porch Initiative team has integrated this flexibility into tive team continues to understand how and where Rural Studio homes fit its own system for working with housing providers by amassing a library into the wide world of housing affordability. The house is a vessel not only of details and assemblies that can be applied across prototype homes, to understand how the design of the home can affect its performance, but generating contextually appropriate possibilities for a range of housing also to explore how the procurement of that home affects land use, zonproviders, clients, and sites. ing, lending, insurance, and more. As we work with our Partners, In addition to the design of the prototype homes, the on-the-ground we have begun to collect these lessons into a series of “key work at Rural Studio provides qualitative observations about rural takeaways,” which distill lessons learned, both in West housing patterns and conditions. In many ways, designing and buildAlabama and beyond. These key takeaways outline ing houses provides a means of illustrating unseen linkages, patchallenges to housing affordability and how we terns, and systems. Gained through years of living and working in can respond and begin to address some West Alabama, these observations offer insight into the specific of the barriers to equitable access challenges and opportunities of rural living. Though observed to high-performance housing.

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PAIR TEAM

THE WORK OF THE PAIR GRANT TEAM

Rural Studio, in collaboration with faculty from the College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC) and the College of Liberal Arts (CLA), received a 3-year $1.25 million grant from Auburn University’s Presidential Award for Interdisciplinary Research (PAIR) program. This interdisciplinary team developed informational infrastructure for the Front Porch Initiative, the Studio’s multi-faceted project to increase home availability and affordability in under-resourced rural communities beyond our traditional range. This work draws on years of students’ research at Rural Studio, aiming to develop a scalable, sustainable, and resilient process for delivering homes.

To pursue this goal, the PAIR team created a suite of new informational materials—including a website, brochures, and presentation materials—and, more importantly, the messaging and visual communications to convey the project to a wide range of audiences. As we have scaled up our communication to wider audiences, we have also created the Rural Studio style guide to help visual and written communication and insure consistency. The process for this intense collaborative work has pushed us to examine how we frame

our work and the reflexive role that language plays as a driver of better inquiry and understanding. We are using not only our hands and tools but also language to work toward a more equitable future while breaking ground on paths to homeownership, often for those in our communities who historically have been denied access and need this opportunity the most. Furthermore, the questions we are asking are designed to promote whole-community wellbeing.

ASK BETTER QUESTIONS versus... ask questions better

PROBLEM SEEKING versus... problem solving

At Rural Studio, we “think out loud with our hands.” We express our curiosity about the nature of people, places, and things through the act of making. We make things (drawings, models, mock-ups) as propositions, perhaps as speculation about what the future might be like. We are asking, “What about this or that?” We propose solutions to better understand the problem itself. Naming, analyzing, and describing things teaches us what we should have said instead, refining our language. In turn, we also learn what we should have asked. This studied relationship between making, language, and communication allows us to ask not only more precise questions but also more useful questions.

A fundamental conundrum of design: How do you know what you don’t know if you don’t even know you don’t know it? By nature, we designers do things badly so that we might do them slightly less badly the next time around, or at least understand what we should have done instead. We are often required to solve problems using experience we don’t yet have. The result: problem seeking becomes the architect’s primary operation. By seeking out, collecting, and surrounding ourselves with more, and more, and more problems, we might discover a problem that we actually do have the experience to solve.

HOUSING AFFORDABILITY versus... affordable housing

INCENTIVE AND REBATE versus... subsidy and forgiveness

As Robert Irwin famously said, “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.” Similarly, our desire to understand and address challenges has always been through the use of verbs, action words, and effects, rather than nouns and the names of things (think “a place to sleep in peace, comfort, and security” vs. “a bedroom”). Only by shifting our focus away from the “thingness” of “affordable housing” (we know what that looks like!) to the systemic challenges of housing affordability, to its causes and effects, might we then be able to imagine alternative approaches to equitable access and outcomes.

In discussions of equity, access, affordability, and wealth, there is often a subtle narrative of shifted responsibility and blame. What do the terms the financial industry commonly uses subtly imply? How do they affect our perceptions of worthiness or deservedness? How do terms prevalent in the industry denote and connote value and responsibility? For example, how do terms like “subsidy” and “forgiveness” bias the conversation? How can we change the national conversation to “incentivize” and “reward”?

LOW WEALTH versus... low income

INVESTMENT versus... expense

Homeownership is first a way to store income, and then a source of additional income through the appreciation of equity. As such, homeownership is the cornerstone of wealth building and financial wellbeing. So, although income is certainly an important part of homeownership, for many in this country equitable access to housing has been intentionally denied regardless of income. This disenfranchisement has only served to increase financial inequities over time.

And this increasing gap can be particularly disproportionate in rural places, where accrued wealth is not simply measured by the ability to extract capital from a home, but more often as the ability to pass a home to the next generation.

A home can turn even a modest income into wealth over time. To increase its affordability, we must consider how a home itself might shift income from an expense to an investment. For example, if a house is designed and constructed to reduce energy expenses by $25.00 per month, the homeowner could instead invest that $25.00 via an increased mortgage payment. Given the compounding nature of the mortgage, the homeowner can now finance an additional $5000.00 in energy-efficient construction for the same monthly outlay. Counterintuitively, the home that costs more to build can be more affordable, even reducing the risk to all stakeholders: the homeowner, the lender, and the insurer!

WHAT DOES A HOUSE AFFORD? versus... What does a house cost?

THE COST OF DOING SOMETHING versus... the cost of doing nothing

“What does it cost to build a house?” That’s an important question. But in our work to promote equitable housing access and affordability, even more useful is understanding what a house affords—to the homeowner, lender, and insurer.

What effect do changes that stabilize expenses have on a person’s ability to continue homeownership? How might a more durable, resilient home reduce displacement and mitigate costly repairs in climate-related disasters? How does living in a healthier home reduce chronic illness, missed days of work or school, and long-term preventative healthcare costs? And what contribution can procurement and ownership of such a home have on the very community in which it is situated?

So, what does it cost if we don’t build a house? For Rural Studio, our partners, and our neighbors, this is the most instructive, useful question of all. We are faced with the growing crisis of housing affordability and the many disastrous impacts on our families, communities, economy, and social well-being. Doing nothing is not an option. Inaction is likely the most expensive decision we could make, and these costs are knowable. Uncovering the hidden costs of inaction, and who bears those costs, is the first step in the paradigm shift required to truly address the equitable access to good, durable, healthy, and affordable housing for all.

COMMUNICATION IS KEY

Issues of equitable housing access and affordability are not simply brick-andmortar problems to be solved by architectural design alone. The multitude of barriers to homeownership are systemic, historical, cultural, legal, ethical, political, and intentional. But architecture does play an important, central role in actualizing a more equitable future: in the built environment, these layered, nuanced, and invisible circumstances of disinvestment and disenfranchisement intersect and become visible. Articulating these challenges more clearly and precisely helps us to better see the opportunities in front of us.

PAIR TEAM MEMBERS COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION—SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING & LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: Andrew Freear, Wiatt Professor & Director of

Rural Studio; Rusty Smith, Associate Director, Rural Studio; Betsy Garcia, Assistant Research Professor at Rural Studio; David Hinson, Professor; Emily McGlohn, Associate Professor at Rural Studio; Justin Miller, Program Chair & Associate Professor; Mackenzie Stagg, Assistant Research Professor at Rural Studio; Margaret Fletcher, Gresham Associate Professor; Natalie Butts-Ball, Spec III, Communication & Marketing Deptartment at Rural Studio; Xavier Vendrell, Professor. SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL & GRAPHIC DESIGN: Courtney Windham, Associate Professor. COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS—ENGLISH DEPARTMENT: Michelle Sidler, Associate Professor; Susan Youngblood, Associate Professor & Associate Department Chair. SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION & JOURNALISM: Ed Youngblood, Professor and Associate Director of Media Studies.

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PAIR TEAM

Betsy Farrell Garcia

Andrew Freear

Rural Studio Design Team

Rural Studio Design Team

Mackenzie Stagg Project Manager

Emily McGlohn Rural Studio Design Team

David Hinson Subject Matter Expert: NGO Interface

Ed Youngblood Usability Testing

Natalie Butts-Ball Communications Manager

Margaret Fletcher Information Designer

Courtney Windham

Susan Youngblood

Graphic Designer

Rusty Smith Principal Investigator

Justin Miller Michelle Sidler Technical Communication Director

Front Porch Idea Book, 2021

Subject Matter Expert: Building Assembly and Accessibility

Technical Content Coordination

Xavier Vendrell Rural Studio Design Team

Wordmark Redesign, 2020

Brochures, 2018

Visual & Writing Style Guide, 2021

Exhibition Design, 2019

Brochures, 2021

Rural Studio Website Redesign with Tatum Design, 2019

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STAFF PROFILE

CHEF CAT “I am Catherine Tabb, born in Hale County Greensboro, Alabama. I come from a hard-working family of good cooks.”

That’s how Catherine “Chef Cat” introduces herself, and it is a fitting description. Chef Cat has been the kitchen chef at Rural Studio for almost a decade, feeding hundreds of students, faculty, and staff. She is one of the most dedicated employees we’ve ever had at the Studio. And no one ever misses taco day or her famous fried catfish!

Catherine changed the game for Rural Studio.

Previously, food was cooked outside the Studio and delivered. Catherine became our first true on-site fulltime cook and then shortly after, she took on the task of prepping food from the Farm. She does it all with a mischievous grin and a wickedly sharp sense of humor.

Her father was a chef, and her mother was a school cafeteria cook. Her skills come naturally, as does her work ethic. Before Rural Studio, Chef Cat worked at several restaurants; she was also a childcare worker, an assistant store manager, and a seamstress. She is close to her family and cared for several relatives who battled cancer. She brings this hard work and fierce loyalty to her cooking at Rural Studio, creating recipes that nourish the body and soul of the Rural Studio community.

CATHERINE TABB CATHERINE TABB’S TRADITIONAL GAZPACHO RECIPE INGREDIENTS 4 medium ripe red tomatoes, coarsely chopped 1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and coarsely chopped 1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and coarsely chopped 1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and finely diced ½ medium red onion, finely diced 2 cloves garlic, chopped 1 slice French bread, diced ½ cup chopped fresh herbs, such as basil, oregano, and/or flat-leaf parsley 1 green jalapeño pepper 1 cup ice water, or amt as needed 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil 2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar, or to taste Salt to taste Fresh ground black pepper

PREPARATION 1. Chop and dice as instructed above 2. Set aside for garnish the jalapeño, bread, and 2 Tbsp each of cucumber, red onion, fresh herbs, and the combination of peppers 3. Process all other ingredients together until soup is desired texture 4. Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed 5. Chill for at least one hour before serving 6. Garnish with jalapeño, bread, and reserved chopped vegetables

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RURAL STUDIO FARM

FARM HARVEST

308.9lb.

MUSTARD GREENS amara, red giant

158.8lb.

COLLARD GREENS champion

34.4lb.

ARUGULA astro

24.3lb.

BASIL prospera, sweet genovese

48.9lb.

BEANS carminat

97.2lb.

BEETS red ace

271.1lb.

BELL PEPPERS eros, cupid

14.4 lb.

BLACKBERRIES kiowa

115.7lb.

BRASSICA GREENS mix

27.3lb.

BROCCOLI imperial

157.4lb.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH burpee butterbush

327.3lb.

CARROTS cosmic purple, chantenay red core, hercules

14.9lb.

CELERY tango

39.5lb.

CHERRY TOMATOES sun gold, matt’s wild cherry

26.7lb.

GARLIC inchelium red

100.8lb.

CUCUMBERS corinto

424.2lb.

EGGPLANT fairytale, orient express

99lb.

JALAPENO jedi

7.6lb.

HERBS dill, cilantro, oregano, parsley, mint, thyme

24.2lb.

LEEKS american flag

106lb.

ONION candy, yellow granex

106.3lb.

RADISHES crunchy king, sparkler

209.3lb.

PARSNIPS albion

181.7lb.

OKRA evertender

584.3lb.

TOMATOES mountain merit, BHN 1021

12.1lb.

SCALLIONS evergreen white

375.4lb.

SUMMER SQUASH early prolific straightneck

80.2lb.

RUTABAGA american purple top yellow

526.9lb.

LETTUCES muir, coastal star, jericho, outredgeous, red cross, wildfire, starfighter, salanova

68.3lb.

HAKUREI TURNIPS hakurei

108.5lb.

SPINACH auroch, hammerhead, seaside

255.9lb.

TURNIPS purple top white globe

29.5lb.

PEANUTS virginia jumbo

330.9lb.

SOUTHERN PEAS pinkeye purple hull

412.6lb.

KALE red russian, dinosaur

234.9lb.

ZUCCHINI dunja, tender green

286.3lb.

WATERMELONS crimson sweet, wilson sweet, orangeglo

P R O D U C T I O N TOTA L 6 , 2 3 1 . 7 l b . ( J U N E 2 0 2 0 –J U N E 2 0 2 1 )

We know that economic and health security is supported by many institutions: individuals, families, communities, and society at large.

Access to nutritious food that is locally and sustainably grown also contributes to well-being.

Rural access is often limited, so Rural Studio is addressing this challenge through its Farm, which includes traditional planting and greenhouse growing and provides fresh, local, and organic food for students and staff.

The Rural Studio Farm is an established part of Rural Studio culture that enhances students’ experience and education. Every student who comes to Rural Studio works for 10–15 hours per semester on the farm, doing everything from hand-pollinating in the greenhouse to pruning and training tomatoes and blackberries in the front yard. This work offers more than nutritious food: it also teaches students about the importance of food literacy. Knowing where food comes from is vital to eliminating food insecurity because many retail foods are not sustainably grown. Understanding this connection to our food is even more critical in food deserts, where fresh nutritious food is not always available.

Counterintuitively, despite the rural nature of agriculture, food deserts are all too common realities in rural settings, where land is often overworked or used exclusively for large-scale industrial farming.

Rural Studio’s Farm is managed to be sustainable and regenerative to the depleted Black Belt soil. One tenet of this philosophy is an emphasis on crop diversity: the farm grows about 30 primary crops, like rutabagas, spinach, eggplants, melons, and potatoes, as well as flowers and herbs that help support the farm by promoting pollinators and beneficial insects. These measures reduce or eliminate the need for pesticides and improve the farm’s resilience. We introduced sweet potatoes and sweet corn to the crop rotation this year in order to add more options to the kitchen and further diversify production. Looking long-term, we have also added more perennial fruit to the farm: blueberries, hardy kiwi, mayhaw, Asian pears, elderberries, and crabapples. These crops are grown sustainably: in addition to no-till farming, we have been experimenting and fine-tuning our use of cover crops—non-food crops that are grown to improve the soil and provide other benefits to the farm like controlling erosion and drainage.

After the past several years of hard work and increasing growing capacity, the Farm was a bright spot of hope and optimism during the pandemic. Despite the many challenges Rural Studio faced, the farm produced just over 5,700 pounds of produce, exceeding last year’s harvest totals. And although we had a sudden surplus of vegetables, Chef Cat was able to freeze, can, pickle, and otherwise preserve nearly all of this for future meals. Students, staff, and faculty continue to enjoy the food that they had a direct hand in growing.

Auburn University Rural Studio PO Box 278 Newbern, AL 36765