Four Food-Related Projects by Rural Studio

By Asad Syrkett

County Fare — In 2005, Rural Studio and the Lions Park Committee in Greensboro, Alabama, embarked on a multiphase, multiyear project to rehabilitate the playing fields, playground, and environs of 40-acre Lions Park. In 2008, Rural Studio began work on the Lions Park Concessions Stand. Over nine months, in a contractor's workshop in Birmingham, a student design-build team erected the structure, composed of a tubular-steel frame, and later clad it in aluminum. “We based the stand's shape on a mouth,” explains Freear, describing the abstracted clamshell-like form, which opens and closes with a winch-and-steel-rope mechanism. In addition to providing income for the park, the amenity gets Greensboro's baseball fans outside and socializing. “It's the lifeblood of the park,” says Freear.

*Photo © Timothy Hursley*

Architects & Firms

Rural Studio

Since it was founded in 1993 by Samuel Mockbee and Dennis K. Ruth, Rural Studio has provided first-rate architecture for disadvantaged populations in and around Hale County, Alabama. Houses, chapels, and community centers are among the structures designed and built by the firm with undergraduate architecture students at Auburn University. After Mockbee's death in 2001, British architect and educator Andrew Freear assumed the helm of the program, which under his watch has taken on a number of food-related projects.

Click through the slideshow above to read more about four projects all built to foster community in a traditionally underserved region.

KEYWORDS: Alabama