Architects who work for a single people

BarcelonaThe world's major metropolises are increasingly welcoming more people. According to the UN's 2022 World Cities Report, by 2050, 68% of the population will live in cities. Meanwhile, what about the future of rural areas? In the United States, one of the architects working on this is British architect Andrew Freear (Yorkshire, 1966), director of Rural Studio at the School of Architecture at Auburn University (Alabama). He has been working for over twenty years in the rural area of Newbern, a low-income town in rural Alabama, and over the years, his students have designed more than 220 community buildings, houses, and parks.

Being an architect in this context is no easy job. In addition to being a teacher and designer, Freear also acts as a "builder, advocate, and liaison between local authorities, partners, and students," according to sources at the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, who invited Freear to give a lecture on his work as the 2023 winner of the Thomas Foundation Medal for Architecture. "says Freear, who calls for good architecture and access to housing to be as democratized as possible." "Good design should be for everyone and everywhere, and not depend on income, wealth, or skin color. And we must convey that having decent housing is a fundamental right," emphasizes

In 2023, the population of Newbern was approximately 133 people, 88% of whom were African American and 28% white. The median income was $36,346, compared to $62,212 for the state of Alabama as a whole. The poverty rate was 15.6%. For Freear, Newbern, in Hale County, is in the "Deep South," the "good old Disunited States of America." Geographically, it is at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. It is a landscape ravaged by mineral and timber extraction and home to a very poor, predominantly African American population.

"They say the rural world is dying, but the global population has tripled. It's not dying, it's just been miscounted. We can say that the Newbern area is an extractive landscape, the result of a very colonialist attitude toward the rural world," says Freeant. "It's the Mississippi, the Mississippi, the Mississippi, minerals from the forests, from which assets have been taken that have not been returned." The name Black Belt refers to the color of the prehistoric subsoil in this area, which took on new meaning when waves of slaves were brought from Africa in the 19th century to work the cotton plantations. This area, which includes Hale, Greene, Sumter, and Perry counties, It is one of the strongholds of the Democratic vote, in a Republican-majority state.

The responsibility of being an architect

Andrew Freear arrived at Rural Studio 25 years ago, six years after its founding. The students he works with are between 18 and 23 years old, and usually work in teams. "They don't build my designs; they're theirs. And to bring them to fruition, it takes a lot of conversations and a lot of work," says Freear, who explains that all projects are funded publicly or through donations. "I'm paid by the state and the university, but for all the buildings we build, we have to find the money and work with the local community. And the students are very good at getting donations," says the architect.

So necessity is the mother of invention; the village bird observatory is made from a 30-meter fire lookout tower that four students bought for about $10. To get it back up and running, they installed a new staircase and railing, as well as a walkway. Regarding authorship in these teamwork processes, he says that "no one signs anything" and that the university covers them. "We're not acting as architects; we're simply doing something that no one else is doing. We don't see it as a luxury; in reality, it's a kind of responsibility that you're building at the highest level," he explains. "We've been neighbors for 31 years; I think they trust us. I live there, if they do nothing, but if they do something, they don't just build a place, they build something. Screw it!"

The common thread that runs through some of Rural Studio's work is pre-existing architecture from the time of slavery. "We try to learn from the strengths of these buildings, from what we find can be considered great architecture: high ceilings, porches, good cross-ventilation, narrow floor plans, and stairs as ventilation strategies. So we're learning from vernacular agricultural architecture," says Freear. Another notable work is the tiny 18 x 18 House, whose dimensions are equivalent to two parking spaces. This is a prototype of housing that also works for cities, because its dimensions respond to the negotiations taking place in American cities for developers to create affordable housing instead of parking.

As for community uses, a local family donated the old bank office in the town's Old Town to become a library. And in the neighboring town of Greensboro, they created the Safe House Black History Museum, the result of restoring and expanding the house where Martin Luther King took refuge from the Ku Klux Klan two weeks before his assassination. Now, a continuous roof unites the existing buildings, whose exteriors have been restored, and an addition occupies the museum's reception area.