Mockbee receives
AIA'S 2004 Gold Medal
By Staff
December 7,2003
from staff reports
AUBURN, Ala. Meridian native Samuel (Sambo) Mockbee has joined the ranks of history's greatest architects, a list that includes such icons as Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright and I.M. Pei.
Mockbee, who died of complications from leukemia in December 2001, has been selected as the 2004 recipient of the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal. It is the highest individual award presented by the AIA to a person whose significant bodies of work have lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.
Jamie Aycock, Gulf States regional director for AIA, nominated Mockbee for the award based on his exceptional vision related to Auburn's Rural Studio.
As a Gold Medal recipient, Mockbee's name will be chiseled into the AIA's granite Wall of Honor at the organization's Washington, D.C., headquarters. Mockbee's widow, Jackie, who lives in Canton, will accept the Gold Medal at the 2004 American Architectural Foundation Accent on Architecture Gala on March 3 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.
In 1993, Mockbee and Rural Studio co-founder D.K. Ruth began taking students from Auburn University's College of Architecture, Design and Construction to the Rural Studio's base in Newbern, Ala., a town about 160 miles from campus in rural Hale County. The West Alabama county is one of the poorest in the United States, with more than 1,400 substandard dwellings.
Since then, students, in consultation with local residents, have produced architecture that challenges all convention in terms of methods, materials and forms.
The students use such discarded objects as tires, scrap wood, and bottles as structural materials. The buildings they create are an enlightened fusion of traditional vernacular and innovative avant-garde that break down stylistic stereotypes.
Since its inception, architectural students at the Rural Studio have built several new homes and numerous community projects including a farmer's market, children's center, a chapel, a bus stop and community center and an open-air pavilion.
In addition, the students have completed hundreds of small construction projects such as roof repairs and new stairs.
In addition to serving as Alumni Professor of architecture at Auburn, Mockbee was a partner in the firm of Mockbee/Coker in Memphis, Tenn., and Canton, Miss. He received a bachelor's degree in architecture from AU in 1974. He began practicing architecture in 1977. In 1989, he was elected to the AIA's College of Fellows.
Mockbee was a visiting professor in the schools of architecture and design at Harvard University, the University of Virginia, Yale University and the University of California at Berkeley. He was the only person represented twice for his work with Mockbee/Coker and for the Rural Studio in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum/Smithsonian Institution's first National Design Triennial exhibit titled "Design Culture Now," held in New York City in 2000.
In 2000, Mockbee's work with the Rural Studio earned him a "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In 1998, he received the first Apgar Award for Excellence from the National Building Museum for his efforts to promote the practice of architecture as a social good.
