Abstract

The Rural Studio, which was founded by Samuel Mockbee in 1992 and lead by him until his death in 2001, continues its activities. Its specialty is, now as before, the design of innovative houses for poor people living in Alabama's second-poorest county, Hale County, by relying largely on donated and salvaged materials. The houses are made of car windshields, surplus carpet tiles, baled cardboard, old street signs, license plates, etc. Alexis de Tocqueville has said that democracy lowers the standards of creation,1 and it seems that, for architecture, this has become a sad truth in many cases in industrialized countries. The Rural Studio wants to contradict this tendency by showing that even within the context of ..