'PROCEED AND BE BOLD' Architect inspires city leaders to organize urban studio By Guy P. Beneventano Guy P. Beneventano is president of the Harrisburg Urban Initiative, co-coordinator of the Urban Studio Task Force, and of-counsel with Nauman, Smith, Shissler & Hall, the oldest law firm in Harrisburg.   The architect Samuel Mockbee was a gifted and heroic visionary. He dedicated much of his career to teaching and building housing for the rural poor. Professor Mockbee preached that "people and place matter." Architects, he believed, should live in, and be part of, the communities they are designing so that they come to "seek solutions to the needs of the community within the community's own context, not outside it." During an inspired moment in the early 1990s, Mockbee founded the Rural Studio as a satellite campus of Auburn University. Architecture students- working under his careful guidance and oft-spoken admonition, "proceed and be bold"- designed and constructed community buildings and exceptional housing for needy people throughout rural Alabama. The construction phase of the work has been mainly accomplished through the creative use of salvaged local materials such as hay bales, tires, lumber, bricks, concrete rubble and colored bottles. In 2001, Mockbee died. Nevertheless, his life's work lives. Today, the Rural Studio is known worldwide as an effective program for advancing social change through the education of architects, with its designs and models regularly exhibited in great museums such as the Smithsonian. Learning of Mockbee, another visionary, Harrisburg Mayor Stephan R. Reed, has begun to imagine how the work of the Rural Studio might be replicated here in our urban community. This summer, Mayor Reed formed the Harrisburg Urban Studio Task Force as part of the Harrisburg Urban Initiative, the volunteer effort of a group of business and community leaders to expand the educational and cultural opportunities afforded the city's children. The Urban Studio Task Force includes architecture faculty members and administrators from Penn State University, Temple University, Carnegie Mellon University and Harrisburg Area Community College, plus two senior mayoral cabinet members. Professor Bruce Lindsey, Mockbee's successor as director of the Rural Studio at Auburn, has also enthusiastically joined the group. The mission of the task force is to create a viable "urban studio" that will spur the development of a people's architecture, one that meets the economic and social needs of Harrisburg's residents. Students will spend a semester or more living and working in Harrisburg. Each project will be designed after detailed research and in concert with the wishes of the residents of the affect neighborhoods. Thus, the task force aims to achieve the Rural Studio's overall goal of addressing genuine community needs as defined and identified by those who live in the community. In time, we'll seek to develop a working relationship with local professionals who are positioned to help Reed achieve some of the workforce development he seeks to gain through the creation of the Science and Technology High School and the establishment of Harrisburg university of Science and Technology. For the present, the task force is focused on establishing the curriculum for the urban studio, coordinating planning between the city and the participating colleges and universities, and identifying an appropriate physical location for the student studio (preferably downtown Harrisburg, in a location with plenty of visibility from the street). Harrisburg is the perfect place to fashion an urban architecture studio. The size of the city is manageable, and its many neighborhoods already receive public services necessary for sustained development. Moreover, generations of residents demonstrate an unceasing loyalty and commitment to the well-being of the city. Most important, Reed's influence will help advance the effort. Given the resources at hand, he has time and again demonstrated that he is the most successful mayor in the United States. His support for the urban studio will undoubtedly remove barriers that would prove insurmountable elsewhere. Grand architecture is not just the preserve of the wealthy, nor is it the main province of government. Instead, architecture belongs to all of us, and it can be used as a tool to raise self-esteem and create a sense of community pride. A successful urban studio can transform Harrisburg by elevating it to the forefront of the design/build architectural world. The studio itself will address community needs by transforming abstract classroom ideas into workable real world solutions. In the words of Mockbee (and through Reed's example), let us proceed - and be bold!

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