Editing Rural Studio (section)

== Notable projects ==

=== Safe House Black History Museum ===
The studio renovated, restored, and made an addition to the [[Safe House Black History Museum]] in Greensboro, Alabama, in the late 2010s.<ref name=":22">{{Cite web |title=Safe House Black History Museum |url=https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/safe-house-black-history-museum/ |access-date=2024-01-24 |website=[[Encyclopedia of Alabama]] |language=en-US}}</ref> The redesign was awarded third place in [[The American Architect|American Architect]]'s Building of the Year competition.<ref name=":22" />

=== $20K House ===
The [[$20K House]] is an ongoing research project at the Rural Studio that seeks to address the pressing need for decent and affordable housing in [[Hale County, Alabama]]. Nearly 30% of the people in Hale County live in poverty. Due to the lack of conventional credit for people with their level of income, and insufficient knowledge about alternative sources of funding, [[mobile home]]s offer the only chance for home ownership for many. Unlike a house, which is an asset for its owner, trailers deteriorate very quickly and [[depreciate]] over time. Mobile homes are also correlated with higher cancer rates due to the use of formaldehyde in their construction.{{Citation needed|date=January 2023|reason=Is causation by formaldehyde proved or inferred?}}

The $20k House project is intended to design a model home that could be reproduced on a large scale, and thereby become a viable alternative to a mobile home. The challenge is to build a house for $20,000, ten to twelve thousand of which will go towards materials and the remainder to contracted labor. Once a truly successful model has been designed, the aim is to sell the houses in conjunction with the "[[502 Direct Loan]]" provided by the [[Rural Housing Service]]. The project began in 2005, and there have been at least 16 iterations of the house.