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AU ARCHITECT MOCKBEE HONORED BY NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM
AUBURN -- Samuel Mockbee, a professor of architecture at Auburn University, has been named the first recipient of the National Building Museum's Apgar Award for Excellence.
The co-founder and director of AU's Rural Studio actually won the award in 1998 for promoting the practice of architecture as a social good, but wasn't able to accept it then because of illness.
Mockbee will receive the award during a lecture he will give at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., on Jan. 20. He will discuss the Rural Studio, his design philosophy, and several of his residential, commercial and institutional buildings.
Mockbee has earned national recognition as the director of the Rural Studio, founded in 1993 in rural Hale County, where he trains Auburn architecture students to design and build homes for the countyıs poor residents.
Established by former National Building Museum Trustee Mahlon Apgar IV, and his wife, Anne Apgar, the award recognizes the contributions of those whose observation, interpretation, and evaluation of building environments "heighten the public awareness of excellence in building and urban design, development, community revitalization and city and regional planning."
Mockbee calls the work he and AU students do "socially responsible architecture with esthetics."
"We want to expose students to their social responsibility as architectural citizens, along with the principles of design and construction," he says. "Everybody wants the same thing, rich or poor -- not only a warm, dry roof but a shelter for the soul. If it doesn't have that, it isn't architecture."
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CONTACT: Mockbee, 334/624-4483; Lisa Knapp, National Building Museum, 202/272-2448.