Citizen Architect drafts a document of Samuel Mockbee’s vision

Documentary shows how Auburn’s Rural Studio sent waves through the architectural world

If the word architecture immediately conjures visions of massive buildings in glittering cities for you, you’re not alone. “In architecture school, you learn that architecture is in New York, in London or in Los Angeles ... and you learn that if you’re going to be successful, you open your practice in one of those big cities,” says Lucy Begg, a former architecture student featured in Citizen Architect. That conventional understanding of the practice, though, isn’t what Samuel Mockbee taught Begg or any of his architecture students at Auburn University. In documenting the creation and practice of Auburn’s immersive and iconoclastic architecture program, the Rural Studio, Citizen Architect makes a strong argument for redefining our collective notion of what architecture can do.