Author: Meagan Mitchell

Moving on Up

March 13, 2023

It’s been a busy month for the 18×18 House! Design of the house is moving into a technical mix of details, framing, material choices, and structural design.

The team finally got to meet the FPI building partners from Nashville, TN, whose idea created the 18×18 project. Eddie Latimer, CEO of Affordable Housing Resources, and Barbara Harper from Honeybee Builders spent Valentine’s Day in Hale County with the Front Porch Initiative and students. The 18×18 House team presented their work to Eddie and Barbara and received feedback on expectations for the project. It was an exciting day for all of us!

The same week, engineer Joe Burns and architect Dan Wheeler came back to Newbern to help the teams move forward with structural and detail strategies. A first round of full-size details made it onto the wall for discussion, and the team explored structural possibilities for the house’s storage system.

New York architect Andrew Berman also came to work in Hale County this month. He pushed the 18×18 House team further into designing a loft for the house, and his visit left them ready to make that space bigger, better, and more usable. Now the team is exploring how to design a dormer to make an upper level for the house, which could be an extra bedroom, workspace, living area, playroom… the list of possibilities is growing!

And this month brought tool trailers into the mix! Keys were made, inventory was taken, and spirits are high as Executive Reviews (and construction!) get closer. Check in next month to see where the team is after their biggest review of the year!

Tags: 18x18house, rs5thyears, ruralhousing

New Year, Same Squares

February 16, 2023

The 18×18 House team has hit the ground running this semester!

students sitting in front of presentation

Soup Roast left this project at a turning point with details and built-in storage in mind. Now, the team is considering both construction logistics and how the project design can be used outside of Hale County. After the fall semester, the 18×18 House has two versions of its (dare we say…final?) plan. The two versions are the team’s new solution for “flippability.” This means the house can be built with a kitchen either upstairs or downstairs with minimal design changes made.

As the first visitors of 2023, Jim Stockard and Chris Herbert came all the way from Harvard University. Chris Herbert is Managing Director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. James Stockard is a Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. They are housing and policy specialists and educators, so they helped the team understand the best ways to talk about the 18×18 House and its connection to housing as a social issue.

February began with a visit from architect Mike Newman and housing specialist Katrina Van Valkenburg, friends of the Studio who have been coming to Newbern for years. Mike and Katrina challenged the team to think about the logistics of building a storage wall into the house. The team is considering a shelving and cabinetry system to maximize the impact of the stairs while providing the house with privacy and some extra storage space.

The first month back in Newbern has flown by, and the 18×18 team is getting excited about building! The new year has brought structural and systems drawings to the table, and new design ideas are always on the way. Check in next month to see where the team is headed in 2023!

Tags: 18x18house, rs5thyears, ruralstudio

Neck Up And Down

February 1, 2023

Hale County has been scrubbed, painted, and shined twice over this week. The first “Neckdown Week” of 2023 is complete! We spent the week maintaining community projects around Newbern and Greensboro alike. In Greensboro, the Safe House Black History Museum got a fresh coat of paint. The Newbern Firehouse, Bodark Amphitheater, and Newbern Playground were also cleaned and repainted.

One of our biggest tasks for Neckdown Week was building a new set of raised garden beds in the Rural Studio Farm Greenhouse. It took a lot of hands and shovels, but the Farm is now ready for a new planting season. The team also found some surprises hiding in the soil. We took a brief mid-week intermission from diggin’ and paintin’ to help Patriece’s Home team unload some of their roofing material. The projects are still moving right along as we all get our hands dirty!

It was a long week of early mornings. But there was plenty of time for fun (and sometimes, cake) while we took care of this place we call home. Neckdown Week was a perfect warm-up for what’s looking like a great semester. Our students and faculty are ready to really get to work! Follow along to see what spring brings for all of the current projects: Patriece’s Home, C.H.O.I.C.E. House, Rosie’s Home, 18×18 House, and Rural Studio Bathhouse.

Tags: bodark amphitheater, greenhouse, neckdown, neckdownweek, newbern fire station, Newbern playground, safe house museum

Hale-oween

November 1, 2022

Here in Hale County, Halloween is the time to work hard and play hard. This year was no different, with a week full of pumpkins, presentations, and of course, costumes. We started the week early, with carving and displaying pumpkins at Red Barn on Tuesday evening. Friends and families from town came to join in on the fun too!

After a long week of rushing to finish costumes and drawings, our students presented for Halloween Reviews on Friday. We had familiar faces return this year, including Marlon Blackwell from Marlon Blackwell Architects; Emilie Taylor Welty, Director of Architecture at Tulane University and Design-Build Manager of the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design; Emily Neustrom from Material Institute; and the Front Porch Initiative’s Rusty Smith, Betsy Farrell Garcia, and Mackenzie Stagg. We also hosted visitors who came a long way to see the work: Kent Hicks from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Kelly Gregory all the way from San Francisco. Our good friends Timothy and Jeanie Hursley surprised us with a visit and a quick photoshoot of the special day. We can’t wait to see those images soon!

Of course, everyone was dressed for the occasion. Costumes are a must on review day!

To end the day and the week, students and visitors showed off their costumes for each other and our friends in town. This year was tough competition, but Logan Lee was named as pumpkin carving winner, and Rural Studio Bathhouse team won with their Toilet-Trees costumes. Thanks to the Newbern Library and the Newbern Mercantile for wonderful judges and prizes! Check back in on team blogs to see how students move forward next!

Faculty posing in costume — The cast of Jaws and “Sam with SPAM”

Tags: halloween, Halloweenreviews, rs3rdyears, rs5thyears

Workshop Season in Newbern

September 28, 2022

The brand-new 5th-year class arrived in Newbern last month and got straight to work with this year’s lineup of Fall Workshops. We dove into two new projects, the 18×18 House and the Rural Studio Bathhouse.

Our first workshop visitor, friend, and consultant, Kiel Moe, is one of the new Professors of Practice specializing in mass timber at Auburn University School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Planning (APLA). Kiel helped us get our bearings on different types of mass timber, what it can do, and how we might use it to build a new bathhouse for the Pods, our dormitories on site at the Morrisette campus.

Two more APLA faculty, Assistant Professor Emily Knox and Associate Professor David Hill, joined us from Auburn, to dive into all things landscape architecture. They pushed us to think differently about what a “building” is and asked us to consider the broader site, with dirt and vegetation as space makers.

Next, we were put to the test by Cheryl Noel and Ravi Ricker, who visited from Chicago, Illinois, to help us specifically with this year’s house project. The house will only be 18 feet square, so we dug into the building code to understand what stairs can do for such a small house. Cheryl and Ravi asked us to mark out full-scale mock-ups of some of our best plan ideas, and afterwards we explored each one to see what the spaces might feel like.

students and professors with tape mock ups

Architect John Forney came from Birmingham, AL, to turn all preconceptions on their heads. He worked with us to really break apart the bathhouse project and think about how it may be situated across the Morrisette campus. John also challenged us to flip our 18’ x 18’ houses upside-down and see what switching the first- and second-floor program might do.

students talking about drawings on the wall

Our final visitors came all the way from Seattle, Washington! Kim Clements, Joe Schneider, and Jake LaBarre got into the details with us, drawing and sketching rapid-fire to round out our workshops. They helped us start to imagine what our projects might look like and how much space they’ll really take up by mocking up heights and imagining the vertical spaces.

Now we’re ready to get to work! Stay tuned for the next post when we introduce the teams and more details about the new projects!

Tags: rs5thyears, rsworkshops