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

A house in Alabama contains walls adorned with 72,000 individual stacked tiles held in compression by a heavy wooden-ring beam. Belonging to the Harris family, the abode contains a bedroom above and a tornado shelter below. The minds behind the idea trace back to Rural Studio, an off-campus design-build program, rooted in Hale County and part of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture of Auburn University, according to the studio’s website.Known as the Lucy Carpet House, it was constructed in 2002 by a team of six students developing a concept assigned by the studio co-founder Sambo Mockbee. The project was a charity house 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 tiles were held in storage for 7 years to ensure they no longer off-gassed.By creating a system of stacked carpet tiles to make the walls of the house, they were able to conserve enough of the budget to build Lucy the only thing she asked for: a place to pray. For this, Lucy’s bedroom is a sculptural tower, open only to the sky. As she lies 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 were living in precarious old houses. The architects’ proposition was simple: let our students live here and learn by doing, and we will help to build your civic infrastructure. To date, the studio has built more than 200 projects and educated more than 1,200 students in the Black Belt.Around 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 neighbours, finding solutions together. The design-build program challenges students to consider not what can be built but rather what should be built. Their final projects are assessed on whether their structures can stand the test of time, surviving the notorious tornadoes of “Dixie Alley” and the extremes of summer and winter here.“We encourage aspiring young architects to address the ethical responsibility for the social, political, and environmental consequences of what they design and build,” said Andrew Freear, Rural Studio Director.In 2004, Rural Studio began the 20K Initiative to focus students’ efforts on creating single-family detached housing that keeps material and labour costs to an affordable minimum. That program and other research projects have yielded 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 shift models and practices for affordable housing.It might sound 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 Italy, Spain and elsewhere, old families are dying out or departing for cities in search of work and opportunity. For generations, there was little civic infrastructure to keep people rooted and local leaders now seek out the services of Rural Studio to arrest their town’s decline.Over a period of 30 years, waves of students have created the vast Lions Park in nearby Greensboro, turned a defunct bank building into Newbern Library, which became the first place in town where high-speed internet was available to the public, and built Newbern’s town hall out of cypress logs.Today, the program runs the Front Porch Initiative, working with housing providers and organisations nationwide to scale their high-performance, affordable rural housing designs into commercial reality.