Rural Studio has been awarded one of five (and the largest) of Auburn Alumni Association’s first-ever Creed Grants. The new Creed Grant is made possible by the generosity of Auburn Alumni Association Life Members and donors. We will apply this $65,000 grant to design and build our aptly named Cost-Effective, Resilient, Energy-Efficient, Equitable, and Durable (CREED) House.

The CREED House will address critical housing challenges often found in venerable communities by using high-performance design enhancements while reflecting Auburn Creed values of hard work, innovation, and inclusivity:

• Resilience: Resilient building assemblies meeting FORTIFIED Gold standards, ensuring durability and safety in disaster-prone areas.
• Energy Efficiency and Affordability: EnergyStar-certified systems and cutting-edge efficiency strategies to reduce operational costs for homeowners while minimizing environmental impact.
• Safety: A FEMA-compliant Safe Room, which is a hardened structure that provides near-absolute protection from extreme wind events, such as tornadoes and hurricanes. This feature ensures occupants have a high probability of being shielded from injury or death during severe storms.
• Healthfulness: Healthier building materials, to create safe, comfortable living environments for residents.
• Accessibility: Features for multi-generational accessibility features developed with universal design principles, ensuring the home is adaptable to individuals of all ages and abilities.

The house will serve as a prototype that can be adapted to the unique local contexts found in a variety of high-need communities, especially in areas prone to disaster. Third-year professor, Emily McGlohn, recognizes this unique opportunity: “The CREED Grant allows our students to learn about and design a home with resilience in mind. A FEMA Safe Room, Fortified Gold standards, and an integrated emergency generator are not often part of affordably built housing, or any housing for that matter. This support will let us try some new ideas and help us to understand how to build resiliently for everyone. Our client, Mark, is super excited to get started!”

The CREED House will be an “all hands on deck” project for Rural Studio: our 3rd-year student cohorts will work in phases to design and build the CREED House, under the leadership of the Studio’s Newbern faculty and our main campus Front Porch Initiative team. The Hale County faculty will guide students in the design and build of Mark’s Home, and the Front Porch team will provide technical expertise. Then, the Front Porch team will help organizations that build much-needed housing adopt the prototype and adapt it to their local needs.

This project is led by a team of 12 Auburn University alumni, each of whom has dedicated their career to advancing the values of Auburn University through education, research, extension, outreach, and community engagement. These alumni—now faculty and staff at Auburn University Rural Studio—embody the principles of the Auburn Creed in their leadership, mentorship, community engagement, and commitment to impactful, hands-on learning.

War Eagle!

Press:

Auburn University
Auburn Alumni Association awards inaugural Creed Grants

CADC
Architecture, History Faculty Awarded Auburn Creed Grant for Historic Preservation Pilot