Establishing Roots to the Past
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
The foundation has been laid and now the heavy lifting begins for second-year students at the Rural Studio. They completely dismantled St. Luke’s Episcopal Church (circa 1854) last year and cataloged all its elements — from mortise & tenon beams to cut nails. Then, they loaded up the truck and relocated the structure near its original location in Cahawba, the first capital of Alabama.
The effort is painstaking, but history teaches lessons. And Jason Coomes, the instructor for this project, says it awakens the eyes of his young students and town citizens alike. The quality of craftsmanship and ingenuity of construction contributed to its longevity.
Beams used for floor joists weren’t nailed to the foundation. Taboo nowadays perhaps, but a feature that allowed the building to move enough so that it didn’t collapse under stress and strain. Now that they’re assembling the salvaged floor, they’ll date-stamp the contemporary substitutions to provide a legacy for the next generation trying to figure out how the church was built and rebuilt.
In so doing, they preserve our cultural legacy, teach the next generation of architects what it means to design buildings that last, salvage wood that most likely would have deteriorated or been scrapped, and sustain the geography of place that was once washed away by the floodplain of the Cahawba River. This seems like sensible sustainability, one that sates the curiosity of generations to come.
Rural Studio
The site for Auburn’s design/build program that we’re visiting in western Alabama. Provides ample scope of the projects and people involved in the program, and the man who started it all: Sambo.
Sustainability Efforts a Ruse?
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
David Buege, the interim director of Rural Studio while Andrew Freear is on sabbatical, questions the long-term effectiveness of green building and sustainability in general. He wonders whether LEED certification isn’t just another highly profitable add-on service that some architects exploit. Long-term, land-use planning, he says, should be at the forefront of his profession. Without that, most other efforts will fail to make an impact on generations outside of our grandchildren.
People in the field he admires? Frank and Deborah Popper of Rutgers University. They have proposed a radical plan of creating a Buffalo Commons stretching from Canada through the Dakotas right on down to Texas. This commons area would reclaim millions of acres of land and restore the prairies to their natural condition before colonial efforts seized North America. Anne Matthews chronicles their ideas in Where the Buffalo Roam: Restoring America’s Great Plains.
Antioch Baptist Church
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
Thirty minutes north of Greensboro is a magnificent country church with a modernist flare that would appeal to most minimalists. In 2002, a century-old church standing on the site was carefully dismantled right down to the pulled nails so the materials could be reused in its current incarnation. The concrete blocks were salvaged from the women’s dorms at Auburn and serve as a retaining wall leading parishioners into the church.
(photo: Mitch Hanley)
Consumed, and Consuming
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
Irony is not a sentiment lost on us at Speaking of Faith. As we were driving from Birmingham to Greensboro, we (Mitch Hanley, the senior producer, and I) had to swallow hard and chuckle that we are symbolic of the U.S. culture, at large. As part of APM’s upcoming Consumed collaboration in November, we are producing a program on Auburn University’s Rural Studio.
To collect sound and interviews and visuals, we had to travel to the design-build program’s work sites in Hale County, Alabama, from our home base in St. Paul, Minnesota. Yes, we ended up taking two jets and renting a massive SUV — a Dodge Durango — to carry our equipment and sundry people. We are reporting on sustainability and consumption issues. Oy vey.
But, this scenario isn’t a one-off. The confessional part is that I drive an 8-cylinder, 4x4 Toyota Tundra that gets probably 14 mpg in town. And, I do a lot of trekking for childcare and other stuff. The fact is, I love that darned truck. I’ve even named it Black Thunder. My wife cringes and my co-workers laugh, and yes it’s playful and all. But the truth is I like ridin’ high and haulin’ brush and scrap. I’m guilty, and I’m riddled with guilt but I’m not willing to give it up.
(photo: Trent Gilliss)
