#pigroast2018

Hey strangers! It’s been quite a while since we checked in with y’all, and for that, we apologize. This past month has certainly flown by, and now that we have a chance to catch our breath, we can’t wait to tell you all about it!

For those of you that were able to make it out to the annual Rural Studio Pig Roast, thanks so much for coming!! By all accounts, it was a true Pig Roast: an action-packed Saturday full of amazing projects, beautiful weather, delicious food, and all of our friends and families!

The day kicked off with a caravan to Faunsdale where we got to check in on the progress that Anna, Jenny, Grant, and John have made on the Community Center. Everything looks great so far! And while we’re excited for this team to finish, we’re definitely going to miss these friends that have become role models to us!

From Faunsdale, we drove to Dodge City, where the third year students officially opened Ree’s Home! Located right next door to Geraldine’s Home, Ree’s Home is an iteration of Joanne’s Home (20Kv10), with a slightly modified, efficient and square floor plan. Emily McGlohn and Alex Therrien, the third year professors, emcee’d the ribbon cutting event; and Ree’s family was there to thank everyone and take their first steps in the (nearly) completed new home.

At high noon, we headed back to Morisette for lots of talking and lots of tacos. Once we satisfied ourselves with both, we ventured over to the Fabrication Pavilion for the Horseshoe Farm Homes presentation and to see their full-scale mock-up. The drawings and renderings looked spectacular! And their mock-up shows just how hard Sydney, Gavin, Lauren, and Frank have been working to finalize their design and start working on the details that will bring their drawings to life.

Our team left the presentation a little early to head to the Model Home Village where we would be doing our own presentation. Off to a shaky start, the wind had blown our boards off of the plywood stands, and there were tiny termites flying around and permeating the air like humidity. If that was not enough, it was also the hottest time of day; and though we were on the porch, the audience was out in the unshaded yard, after walking a quarter mile to our location.

Nevertheless, after an enthusiastic introduction, a brief run through of all the research we’ve done so far, and the infinite list of thank you’s, everyone applauded and congratulated us on the work we’d accomplished this year. Not only were our friends and families in attendance, but so were some of our favorite consultants and our favorite 20K team - 20Kv21! To the tune of some house-themed music hits (playlist coming soon!), everyone made their way through the Baseline Home and read more about our project before it was time to go to downtown Greensboro to see the Horseshoe Farm Courtyard Project.

Tired, and a little dehydrated, we cleaned up, locked up, and left out of the Model Home Village feeling lighter and brighter. In Greensboro, where everyone ended up taking a coffee break and overloaded the only coffee shop in town, the Horseshoe Farm Courtyard Project eventually began their presentation. Caleb, Claudia, Claire, and Zack wowed us all with their attention to detail and dedication to making this courtyard a positive impact to the regular attendees and visitors at the Horseshoe Farm Hub.

As the sun began to set, we paraded down AL HWY 61 to the Bodark Amphitheater behind Chantilly. Along the way, we stopped by the Woodshop to see the third year’s chairs and boards. Catfish, pork, hush puppies, baked beans, and more Hale County delicacies awaited us atop the hill before we descended to our seats in front of the stage. The Grasshopper String Band played us soft tunes while we ate, before breaking for the Rural Studio Pig Roast Valediction Ceremony.

And what a Valediction Ceremony it was! It was Xavi’s second time hosting, and he did not disappoint. After an inspiring commencement speech from the illustrious Tom Kundig and a few words from Architecture Head, Christian Dagg, all of us fifth-years went up on stage to get “roasted” to death. Somehow, and with alarming accuracy, Xavi was able to recall details about us that even we did not know! Like a detective at a lineup, he called out the bizarre and little-known facts about us in such a way that anyone could tell that he spent too much time looking into this and that he definitely must have had help. To the delight of the crowd, he roasted every last one of us before giving us a hug and our graduation gifts (two books), and ushering us off the stage. Laughter, tears, lots of thank you’s, and more laughter brought us from an orange sky to a navy dusk; and once the sun had given way to the other stars in the sky, so too concluded the 2018 Rural Studio Pig Roast.

When you find out that you’ve been admitted to Rural Studio for your Thesis project, it takes a long time to really hit you. Of course, there’s immediate joy and disbelief - after all, the privilege to study at Rural Studio has been the dream for most of us ever since we applied to Auburn University. But having almost no idea what to expect is an ignorant kind of bliss, and the summer melts away too quickly to get nervous. When you move out to Hale County and begin class with your studio, it still doesn’t quite hit you. The rigor of the projects and the rhythm of this curriculum keeps you on track and motivated to design and detail everything incredibly well and to a high-level of accuracy. It’s so easy to become so immersed in your project and why you’re doing it that you hardly come up for air from August to April. And it isn’t until Pig Roast that we all sit back and look at all the work we’ve done; what we’ve finished on April 28th integrates thousands of hours of charettes, day-long discussions, reviews, critiques, builds, and trace paper, as well as five incredible years of architecture school.

Sitting on a folding chair with a lap full of fried catfish, while taking a deep breath under the stars, in the shadow of Chantilly, in the middle of nowhere, with your teachers and your townspeople, among the classmates that turned into friends and the teammates that turned into family, in early summer a week before you graduate, while everyone sings along to the unfamiliar but catchy tune of “One Meatball” as it fiddles out into the night, it finally hits you: where you are and what you get to do and what a privilege it all is. It hits you like fireworks.

Teary-eyed and yours,