workshop

March 21, 2025

Final presentation of chairs

The 4th annual Rural Studio Design-Build Workshop was a big success! The workshop is attended by 1st-year Auburn University School of Architecture students who, this year, are in the studio class with Assistant Professors Cait McCarthy and Aurélie Frolet.  It’s always a treat welcoming young designers to Newbern and showing them all things Rural Studio.

This week, 31 students attended the two-day workshop in Newbern. The 1st-years got a chance to take a deep dive into woodworking by building a piece of furniture in teams for their studio project.

Steve instructs group on tool safety
Steve teaching tools and safety to group

Rural Studio 5th-year students greeted the 1st-years when they arrived, and Instructor Steve Long kicked off the workshop with a tool and safety training session. Our 3rd-year students put their own skills to the test while helping the 1st-years build their tables.

Student reviews printed drawings
Drawings of chair parts and dimensions
Students building table
stacks of cut wood pieces and cut sheet info
Student chops wood on saw
Three students measuring and marking where to cut plywood
Sanding table
Students building table

Rural Studio’s faculty joined the fun during the two days, too. Director Andrew Freear gave a lunch-time lecture to share what’s new at the Studio.

Flower in bloom
White bean dip and veggie tray

To wrap up the workshop, the 1st-years proudly presented their beautiful, completed tables. We hope to see them back soon!

Students pretend to use newly built table
Students pretending to use newly built table
Student checking out details of newly built table
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Ingredients for Stair Soup

December 16, 2021

Patriece’s Home has been diligently refining their plans (and sections and perspectives) to decide what scheme of a closable adaptable unit in a home works best. The team affectionately renamed their shotgun scheme to the “Hotdog” and the wrapping scheme to the “Hamburger,” and it was apparent before reviews began that the Hamburger scheme is what the team wants to continue with! 

The Hamburger has a corner porch that is an easier approach to place on a variety of sites while also condensing its main circulation in one path through the home’s center. The team has also taken the Myers’ Home team’s approach to rooms without names and applied it to their own definition of adaptability. Now the team is designing rooms that change names, so some living and bedrooms that are easy to rearrange without demolition or constructing immovable fixtures are designed so they can comfortably flip their program as the homeowner needs. 

A plan view of the team's hamburger scheme shows landscaping leading to a gable end approach. A closed door in the center of the plan shows the ground floor can be separated into two halves.

On the Tuesday of Soup Roast, the reviewers discussed the nuances of how the home will be used and pointed out to the team where their project could use some development. And to be even more helpful, the reviewers stayed in Newbern to do a workshop with the team. They got into the details of how eaves (or no eaves) could be detailed, the successes of the dormer, and encourage the team to get a closer view of their design by drawing all the interior elevations of the building. 

As the team continues to work through the Christmas break, come back in 2022 to see them jump into finer details of the project!

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