Using salvaged lumber and bricks, discarded tires, hay and waste cardboard bales, concrete rubble, colored bottles, and old license plates, they create inexpensive buildings in a style Mockbee describes as "contemporary modernism grounded in Southern culture."".

In 1992, Samuel Mockbee launched the Rural Studio to create homes and community buildings for the poor while offering hands-on architecture training for coming generations. This new book explains the changes the studio has undergone since his death.176 pp.

The architect and teacher Samuel Mockbee, founder of Auburn University's Rural Studio, was an idealist who put into action one of the boldest programs in contemporary architecture. Mockbee led his students in the design and construction of homes, community centers and other essential structures in Hale County, Alabama--one of the poorest counties in the United States. Mockbee believed that architecture could play a determining role in combating the brutalities of poverty. He inspired students to create vanguard designs and utilize an array of innovative, cost-effective building materials that included scraps of carpet baled into rectangular building blocks. This combination of ingenuity and enterprise informed the unique character of Mockbee's undertaking. "Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio" appraises Mockbee's unique contribution, assessing how he believed that architecture, practiced as a community-oriented undertaking, could transform the social environment.

For two decades the students of Auburn University's Rural Studio have designed and built remarkable houses and community buildings for impoverished residents of Alabama's Hale County, one of the poorest in the nation. Our critically acclaimed bestseller Rural Studio (2002) showed how salvaged lumber, bricks, discarded tires, hay-and-waste cardboard bales, concrete rubble, colored bottles, carpet tiles, and old license plates were transformed into inexpensive buildings that were also models of sustainable architecture. Rural Studio at Twenty chronicles the evolution of the legendary program, founded by (MacArthur Genius Grant and AIA Gold Medal winner) Samuel Mockbee, and showcases an impressive portfolio of projects. Part monograph, part handbook, and part manifesto, Rural Studio at Twenty is a must-read for any architect, community advocate, professor, or student as a model for engaging place through design.

The work of Samuel Mockbee and Coleman Coker "offers many lessons for projects of all scales and locations. It is an architecture that both celebrates and transcends its regional influences". -- Progressive Architecture

This follow-up to Kate Nesbitt's best-selling anthology Theorizing a New Agenda collects twenty-eight essays that address architecture theory from the mid-1990s, where Nesbitt left off, through the present. Kristin Sykes offers an overview of the myriad approaches and attitudes adopted by architects and architectural theorists during this era. Multiple themes—including the impact of digital technologies on processes of architectural design, production, materiality, and representation; the implications of globalization and networks of information; the growing emphasis on sustainable and green architecture; and the phenomenon of the 'starchitect' and iconic architecture—appear against a background colored by architectural theory, as it existed from the 1960s on, in a period of transition (if not crisis) that centers around the perceived abyss between theory and practice. Theory's transitional state persists today, rendering its immediate history particularly relevant to contemporary thought and practice. While other collections of recent theoretical writings exist none attempt to address the situation as a whole, providing in one place key theoretical texts of the past decade and a half. This book provides a foundation for ongoing discussions surrounding contemporary architectural thought and practice, with iconic essays by Greg Lynn, Deborah Berke, Sanford Kwinter, Samuel Mockbee, Stan Allen, Rem Koolhaas, William Mitchell, Anthony Vidler, Micahel Hays, Reinhold Martin, Reiser + Umemoto, Glenn Murcutt, William McDonough, Micahael Braungart, Michael Speaks, and many more.

Build stylish and functional furniture from salvaged materials. This innovative guide presents dozens of strategies for upcycling scrap cardboard, metal, plastic, or wood into dependable shelving units, sturdy tables, and fun lamps. With directions for 35 easy and inexpensive projects that include a Cardboard Cantilever Chair, a License Plate Bowl, a Conduit Coatrack, and much more, you’ll be inspired to start filling your home with unique high-style furniture that makes sense for both your wallet and the environment.