The National Design Awards, given each year by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, have always included an award for architecture, which over the last 23 years has gone to everyone from Peter Eisenman to Steven Holl to SHoP. But when this year’s awards were announced yesterday, architects had won in several other categories as well.
What is now called the architecture/interior design award went to Rural Studio, the nearly 30-year-old program of Auburn University that has brought inspired architecture to one of the poorest places in the country, Hale County, Alabama. It has helped not only its clients—individuals and small institutions—but also some 1,200 students who have participated in its groundbreaking design/build curriculum. (Its founder, the late Samuel Mockbee, was a finalist for a National Design Award the first year they were given but never won one.) “So it’s come full circle,” the current director, Andrew Freear, said in a phone call.
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