In 2002, architecture students in Alabama stacked 72,000 worn carpet tiles on the walls of a family home; Rural Studio has already built more than 200 projects

A house in Alabama has walls adorned with 72,000 individual stacked shingles held compressed by a heavy wooden beam. Belonging to the Harris family, the abode contains a bedroom upstairs and a tornado shelter below. The minds behind the idea date back to Rural Studio, an off-campus design and construction program with roots in Hale County and part of Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, according to the studio’s website.Known as the Lucy Carpet House, it was built in 2002 by a team of six students who developed a concept assigned by the studio’s co-founder, Sambo Mockbee. The project was an almshouse for Lucy and Anderson Harris and their children. It was funded by Interface Carpet. The company donated $30,000, as well as 72,000 pounds of post-consumer carpet tiles. The slabs were kept in storage for 7 years to ensure they no longer outgassed.By creating a system of stacked carpet tiles to make the walls of the house, they were able to save enough budget to build Lucy the only thing she asked for: a place to pray. To this end, Lucy’s bedroom is a sculptural tower, open only to the sky. While lying in her bed, Lucy can look up at the sky and enjoy the play of light and shadow on the faceted surfaces of her prayer tower.In 1993, two Auburn professors came to this corner of the state, called Hale County, when Newbern was little more than a few dusty streets and churches, and many people lived in old, shabby houses. The architects’ proposal was simple: let our students live here and learn by doing, and we will help them build their civic infrastructure. To date, the studio has built more than 200 projects and trained more than 1,200 students in the Black Belt.About four dozen students are invited to attend each year to participate in this context-based service-learning curriculum, where students live and work alongside our neighbors, finding solutions together. The design-build program challenges students to consider not what can be built but what should be built. Their final projects are evaluated based on whether their structures can stand the test of time, surviving the notorious “Dixie Alley” tornadoes and the extremes of summer and winter here.“We encourage aspiring young architects to address ethical responsibility for the social, political and environmental consequences of what they design and build,” said Andrew Freear, Director of the Rural Studio.In 2004, Rural Studio began the 20K Initiative to focus student efforts on creating detached single-family homes that keep material and labor costs at an affordable minimum. That program and other research projects have generated a body of knowledge that illuminates a scalable solution to the problem of housing affordability. The studio’s latest effort, the Front Porch Initiative, is working toward that goal with the help of several partners. Through housing designs refined from the 20K Initiative, as well as novel financing mechanisms being developed with partners, Rural Studio aims to fundamentally change affordable housing models and practices.It may seem idyllic, but Newbern is also at the sharp end of rural life. As in many small, isolated communities in the American South, as well as in Italy, Spain and elsewhere, old families are disappearing or leaving for the cities in search of work and opportunity. For generations, there was little civic infrastructure to keep people rooted, and local leaders now seek Rural Studio’s services to stem their city’s decline.Over a 30-year period, waves of students created the vast Lions Park in nearby Greensboro, converted a defunct bank building into the Newbern Library, which became the first place in the city where high-speed Internet was available to the public, and built Newbern City Hall out of cypress logs.Currently, the program leads the Front Porch Initiative, which works with housing providers and organizations across the country to turn their high-performance, affordable rural housing designs into a commercial reality.