Andrew Freear, director of Auburn University’s Rural Studio, has been awarded the 2023 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. Sponsored by the University of Virginia and Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Foundation since 1966, the prestigious annual award has recognized exceptional individuals in the fields of architecture as well as law, citizen leadership, and global innovation. Previous awardees in the architecture category include Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei, Jane Jacobs and, in more recent years, David Adjaye, Francis Kéré, Kenneth Frampton, and Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi.
The Newbern, Alabama–based Rural Studio was founded in 1993 by the late architect Samuel Mockbee and D.K. Ruth as an intensive design-build field study program within Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture. Since then, over 1,200 students have passed through the program, which emphasizes on-site, community-centric design focused on the needs of rural populations in Hale, Perry, and Marengo counties in Alabama’s impoverished Black Belt region. “It’s quite extraordinary that a modest undergraduate program in West Alabama can be mentioned alongside giants in our field,” said British-born Freear, who joined Rural Studio in 2000 to serve as “teacher, designer, builder, advocate, and liaison between local authorities, community partners, and students,” according to an announcement.
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