Two Rural Studio Buildings Receive Awards

Rural Studio’s Newbern Town Hall was voted the 2014 Building of the Year in the category of Public Architecture by ArchDaily readers. ArchDaily is the most visited news site for the international architecture community. From over 3,500 projects from around the world, its readership chose the best architecture in 14 categories. The Auburn student design team of Brett Bowers, David Frazier, Mallory Garrett and Zane Morgan worked with the Town of Newbern and its civic leaders to develop a formal gathering place for community functions. The Newbern Town Hall was completed in 2013 and, along with the Newbern Volunteer Fire Department (a 2005 Rural Studio Project), creates a civic space in Newbern, Alabama. To read more, click here.

The Safe House Museum in Greensboro, Alabama was the Third Place winner in the public voting of World-architects eMagazine Building of the Year American-Architects 2013. The student team of Chris Currie, Cassandra Kellogg, and Candace Rimes restored the museum’s two existing shotgun houses and linked the buildings together. They also added a new gallery space for African-American art. The Safe House Museum is of great historical significance to the Civil Rights movement in Hale County, where once the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. sought refuge from the Ku Klux Klan. For more, click here.

Photographs by Timothy Hursley.