SXSW Film
Daily reviews and interviews
By Cindy Widner, Fri., March 19, 2010
Community-Building: Docmaker Sam Wainwright Douglas on Rural Studio architect Samuel Mockbee
For those who feel the fetishizing of modern architecture has reached a high/low point when there's a website dedicated to mocking people who appear in Dwell (the awesome www.unhappyhipsters.com), Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio offers a refreshing corrective: It documents the work of the Rural Studio, an Auburn University design/build program founded by the remarkable Samuel "Sambo" Mockbee to meet mutual needs for housing and public buildings in rural Alabama and for architecture students to both get hands-on experience and be resourceful with materials often donated or reused.
Though Austin director Sam Wainwright Douglas (who produced the film along with his wife, Sarah Ann Mockbee – Sambo's daughter – and Rural Studio instructor and architect Jack "Jay" Sanders) captures the program's global influence and features a few superstars, he mostly sticks close to home, bringing architecture down to earth and reminding us it can provide both beauty and the basics.
Austin Chronicle: I imagine that you're asked a lot, now that Sambo has passed away, to be a stand-in in terms of questions about architecture. How is that for you?
Sam Wainwright Douglas: Sometimes there are folks who wish there was more in the film about specific architectural details and materials and stuff like that. But I wanted to make a film that would get out of the archi-geek stratosphere and really convey some basic universal things about what they were doing.
AC: Is there tension between the traditional architecture in that area and what the Rural Studio is doing?
SWD: There's people who are caught off guard by it, don't quite get it. A lot of people come around to it; a lot of people get it right off the bat and are really blown away by it. It's outside the norm, but they incorporate vernacular forms and are very aware of the way things are built in that region. It's got the character of the place but definitely pushes it in a new direction.
AC: In the film, Sambo mentions being accused of "exploiting poor people." What was he referring to?
SWD: What he was referring to is other academics and people in the architectural press who criticize him – they think that he's using these people to make architecture that he likes, as a playground for his creative ideas. Not true at all. His feeling is: 'Come on down here. You will see the mutual appreciation, you will see the mutual respect, you will see that we have become part of a community, and we are not imposing anything on anybody. We're not making judgments about the way people live.'
And I think a lot of times that kind of [critical] attitude is just a way of rationalizing your own discomfort with trying to go into a context you're not familiar with and trying to get to know it, to make a difference.
AC: Like [Yale-associated architect] Peter Eisenman?
SWD: He's the other side of the spectrum. And I think it's good for there to be a spectrum. On the one hand you have Sambo; on the other, you have him.
AC: Do you think it's good for there to be giant, tour de force buildings?
SWD: I think there's a place for all of those things. Those buildings can be magical. They can lift your spirits, and they can touch you in a sublime way.
AC: You edited a Kinky Friedman doc and produced a Holy Modal Rounders film. Do you have a particular inclination toward "folksy," for lack of a better word, subjects?
SWD: I'm interested in people who want to make the world a better place, whether it's through politics or through art or through music or through architecture. And I just like people who are down to earth. A lot of the musicians I've been interested in, and folk artists and other artists, are people who are comfortable with themselves and open. They cut through the bullshit.
AC: You also seem interested in certain cultural intersections.
SWD: One of the major things that Sambo hoped is that by having these students at a young age cross this threshold of poverty and go into this world, that they would come out understanding it, respecting it, understanding the factors that have led to it and have their stereotypes and misconceptions about poverty broken down and that that knowledge would inform decisions that they make about building or energy use or development.
AC: Has that already happened with some of them?
SWD: Definitely. There are some former students in Chattanooga who have built a soup kitchen. There are some former students who have created a nonprofit here [in Austin] called Design Build Alliance. They're working on some affordable low-income housing in East Austin. Another former student has a program here called the Alley Flat Initiative. Jack, my producing buddy, he's done some stuff in Brazil. So yeah, so they're doing a lot of stuff.
Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio
Documentary Feature, Lone Star States
Saturday, March 20, 10pm, Ritz 1
In addition to playing SXSW, Citizen Architect will be shown at numerous venues throughout the U.S. and Europe, will be released on DVD, and will screen on PBS this summer.