Rusty Smith Shares Work of Auburn Rural Studio with RCB Members

Rotarian Cheryl Morgan, and President Brenda Hackney with guest speaker Rusty Smith.

The Rotary Club of Birmingham recently welcomed Rusty Smith, Auburn University Rural Studio Associate Director.

Smith discussed the program that gives architecture students a hands-on educational experience working with the local community in Hale County, Alabama to define solutions, fundraise, design and ultimately build remarkable projects in the underserved communities of Alabama’s rural Black Belt region. Smith discussed the challenges that bar residents in consistently impoverished areas from home ownership and the deep-rooted challenges that tie generations of people to insufficient housing.

“Until we recognize how folks live today in America is actually the intentional outcome of longstanding intersectional injustice, we’ll never be able to truly provide equitable, sustainable, healthy and durable housing access to the people in our communities who need it the most and can afford it the least.”

In addition to constructing and remediating residential homes, the students have built a Boys & Girls Club center in Greensboro, as well as a Town Hall a Volunteer Fire Station in the town of Newbern, where they also transformed an abandoned bank building into a thriving library. The program is being used as a model to provide ready-to-build home templates that are cost-effective, energy efficient, durable, resilient, and promote health and community.

“As designers and architects, the built environment is our tool for making these invisible systems visible. It is this platform upon which we, our partners, and our communities can all work together to imagine alternative potential futures.”