The conventional curriculum for aspiring architects takes place in the studio, with long nights at the drafting desk, or increasingly in the computer lab, with each student working independently on hypothetical projects. In recent decades, some architecture professors have challenged that model, pulling students out of the classroom and into the community, asking students to take the skills they’ve learned to not just design, but build real buildings for real and often needy clients. Known as “design-build” programs, today more than 100 architecture programs in universities around the country include some form of this collaborative, hands-on service-learning model.
Programs like the well-known Rural Studio, run by Auburn University, often focused in their early years on providing affordable housing, gaining an international reputation for the bold and inspiring student-built structures that Rural Studio founder Samuel Mockbee called “shelter for the soul.” But in recent years, these programs have taken on public-interest projects, working with neighborhoods, community groups and municipalities to build everything from small pavilions and arbors to entire parks and community centers.
Picking Up Skills in the Pacific Northwest
On the smaller, more tactical end of the spectrum is the University of Washington’s Howard S. Wright Neighborhood Design/Build Studio. Led by Steve Badanes, known for his work with the eclectic “Jersey Devils” collective of architects and builders, the Neighborhood Design/Build Studio takes place each spring quarter. Over an 11-week course, students must design and build elements for a local community project. The studio often works with community garden projects throughout Seattle, providing structures like trellises, arbors, pavilions and benches.
“This is a class that gets a chance to make things and work for a community group,” says Badanes. “It gives students some exposure to making things. They become better designers because of their practical experience. They also learn to work in a team.” The program is challenging, but it’s also popular. “It’s the reason why most [of the school’s architecture] students come to the University of Washington,” says Badanes.
One such project was Bradner Gardens Park in Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood. “It was an old park that was virtually abandoned in terms of maintenance,” says Badanes. The neglected park was going to be sold by the city for housing, but the neighborhood stepped in to save it, successfully lobbying the city to change the ordinances that would have allowed the property to be sold. Following that victory, the community began looking for grants to redevelop the park and approached Badanes about coming to work on the site. Over two years, the students built numerous structures, including a dramatic leaf-shaped pavilion. “When you look up toward the ribs of the roof structure, it looks like a cherry leaf, with the parallel veins,” says community member Joyce Moty.
Funding was a challenge for the park, but the students’ labor provided essential momentum. “It was a $50,000 structure that we got for $10,000 worth of materials,” says Moty. That labor also counted as a matching contribution for grants, making the park project especially competitive. Moty estimates about $450,000 was raised, and volunteers have contributed around 40,000 hours to the park.
Most recently, the Neighborhood Design/Build Studio worked with the Beacon Food Forest, a permaculture demonstration garden and teaching space in Seattle’s Jefferson Park. Because of the course’s tight timeline, students worked offsite in a warehouse, fabricating structures that would eventually be taken apart, moved by truck, reassembled and craned into place onsite. But the effect when installed is dramatic. “It was a really nice moment for [the Beacon Food Forest], because they were just getting out of the ground with the project, and suddenly they had structures and covered seating for the gardeners,” says Jake LaBarre, an instructor with the studio. “It made the community feel like something’s really happening here,” he says.
Although many of its projects take place in parks, typically the studio works directly with local organizations, rather than the city government, which can move a little too slowly for the course’s 11-week timeline. “It’s usually the nonprofit who makes the deal with us,” says Badanes. “Also, they don’t have any money,” he jokes.
Developing Structural Intelligence in the Deep South
At the other end of the spectrum is the Rural Studio, which operates far from Auburn University’s main campus. Students live in the small town of Newbern, Alabama, and take part in a year-long immersive program. Over the course of two semesters, small teams of students will design and build a single structure all on their own.
Initially, the Rural Studio took on small public projects: a park pavilion here, a playground there. In 2001, it began a multiphase project for Perry Lakes Park, a 600-acre nature preserve near Marion, Alabama, on the Cahaba River. The park, first established in the 1930s by the CCC, shuttered in the 1970s. Between 2001 and 2005, four student teams constructed a pavilion, restrooms, a massive covered suspension bridge and a 100-foot-tall birding tower, recycled and reassembled onsite from a decommissioned fire tower. The park reopened in 2002 when the Rural Studio’s first phase, the pavilion, was completed.
The next big project was Lions Park in Greensboro, Alabama. The local Lions Club chapter purchased the property that would become the park in the 1970s, and baseball fields and an arena for equestrian events were built, but the park wasn’t well-managed. To retire debt on the purchase, the Lions Club sold portions of the property to the county and city governments, leaving the park in three sets of hands. Other portions were sold off for industrial development, and it seemed more might be, threatening the future of the park. “The Lions Club got together and said ‘We’ve got to do something. Greensboro doesn’t have another park,’” says Bill Hemstreet, a member of the Lions Club. He and others formed the Lions Park Development Committee in 2001 and began to plan for the future of the park.
“The park was just kind of out here and was not being utilized very well,” says Hemstreet. “Little League would come out and use the ballfield, but the park just kind of languished. There wasn’t anything going on out here.” The committee approached the Rural Studio for help.
In the fall of 2005, just after wrapping up Perry Lakes, the Rural Studio began the first phase of its renovation of Lions Park. First up was the ballfields. A team of students set about rearranging the fields into a hub-and-spoke configuration, with a central shaded gathering area under some large trees in the center of the park. The project received a $500,000 grant from Baseball Tomorrow, the first of many grants to come for the park. “The amount of money they’ve found to put into this park has been absolutely phenomenal,” says Hemstreet.
Since that initial project, the Rural Studio has carried out another nine projects within the park, including a pavilion, restrooms, park furnishings and a playscape. This year, students, parents, alumni and community members gathered in the park to celebrate the opening of three new phases: a meeting space for the local Boy Scout troop, a fitness trail and landscaping for the park.
The Studio’s long-term relationship with Lions Park has turned it into a teaching space as well. “It allows the students to come and see what’s already been done and evaluate…you can see what works and what doesn’t work,” says Cameron Acheson, a Rural Studio alumna who worked on the playscape project before serving as a Rural Studio instructor for several years. The park has grown organically, with students responding to work that’s been done previously while incorporating lessons learned into the new park elements. “It’s really amazing to see how it transforms each year,” Acheson says. “There’s a skatepark there, and that’s something that the first team wasn’t even thinking of.”
Students build almost everything that goes into the structures, learning the consequences of the lines they draw in the studio. “You name it, they’ve done it,” says Hemstreet. Another, more intangible lesson that students take away is the relationship they form with community members. Students and stakeholders work closely to identify community needs and develop structures that are closely attuned to those needs. That relationship with the community doesn’t end when classes are over. “They’ll get their degree and stay on another year to see that the project’s finished, just out of the moral and ethical commitment that they’ve made to these projects,” says Hemstreet. “They’ll work through the coldest winters I’ve seen, and the hottest summers.”
And that commitment is something that Hemstreet is working to honor. The Lions Park Development Committee is working to recombine the park’s ownership in the hands of the City of Greensboro, and establish the community’s first dedicated park and recreation department. “The investment that the students have made, we have to make sure that that’s protected,” Hemstreet says.
Beyond the Classroom
These studios aren’t just important teaching tools for architecture students, they’re important outreach tools for the state-funded universities that house them, whose missions are often defined in three parts: teaching, research and service. “We are a public university; we belong in the public arena,” says Badanes.
The values that students learn in programs like the Rural Studio and the Neighborhood Design/Build Studio are lessons that they’ll take with them and incorporate in other places. Many of Badanes’ students have stuck around the Seattle area, working in community organizations instead of conventional architecture firms. Even more impressive, the current that has started in these educational studios has slowly trickled into the larger profession. Organizations like Architecture for Humanity and the Make It Right Foundation have raised the profile of public service architecture and made it an increasingly compelling alternative to the celebrity-focused “starchitecture” culture that many inside and out of the profession have criticized in recent years. Most compellingly, these programs have made architecture relevant again and brought beautiful design to communities that big firms will never think about. “Architecture’s not just about building, it’s about people,” says Hemstreet.
Kevan Williams, MLA, is a Park Planner for the Athens-Clarke County Leisure Services Department in Athens, Georgia.