GRAY No_35

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the fridge and keep the lights on after it’s built—is my most
important job as an architect.”
Today, whether he’s working on a $185-per-square-foot first
home or a richly funded dream house, he’s inspired by the phrase
Rural Studio founder Samuel Mockbee painted above the door
“Architecture should be willing to
offend. Otherwise it’s boring.”
—RYAN STEPHENSON, ARCHITECT
of his classroom: “Proceed and Be Bold.” For Stephenson,
boldness is expressed not only through nonconformist design
choices—an outdoor kids’ swing suspended from a cantilevered
second floor; unexpected cladding materials—but
through the architectural act itself. “As designers, we’ve been
given an opportunity to do amazing things, so we should be
bold and do them for other people, not for ourselves,” he says.
To that end, regardless of a project’s scale or budget, he’s onsite
throughout the construction process, “talking to builders
and trying to figure out how to do things better and, honestly,
more cheaply for my clients. There is no reason that simple
and affordable solutions can’t be as beautiful as complex and
expensive ones.”
Mockbee’s motto also inspired Stephenson’s thick-skinned,
bring-it-on attitude toward criticism, in which you can still
glimpse that kid with the nine-trunk treehouse. “I want my work
to evoke emotion both good and bad,” he says. “If you don’t
have equal numbers of people saying, ‘That’s wrong’ and ‘That’s
beautiful,’ then you’re not really pushing anything. I’m okay
with people telling me they don’t like what I do. Architecture
should be willing to offend. Otherwise it’s boring.” ❈
ANDREW POGUE
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