The idea for Rural Studio started in 1993, when Mockbee, frustrated by student projects that were built only to be torn down, had a bigger idea. Why not build walls in real homes where people could really use them? Why spend all this time coming up with designs that are only theoretical when we could spend the same amount of time designing things that are useful?
He and his students headed to Hale County, Alabama, one of the poorest counties in America, where a good 36 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Surely, they could use some unique housing ideas. What if we could build them homes and try our hand at innovative architecture at the same time? What if we could build these homes ourselves for people who could not otherwise afford them? What if we could offer them for free?
Needless to say, a person has to think out of the box to come up with an idea like that. And, in fact, Mockbee and his students have completely torn open the envelope on what's possible in building homes. Rather than follow old forms that say, “Homes are made of wood, brick, or stone,” they came up with innovative designs that used offbeat building materials, such as old tires, hay bales, bottles, and even cast-off license plates.
Suddenly, people who had lived in substandard housing their entire lives had not only warm, safe homes, but homes that Mockbee likes to call “warm, safe homes with spirit.” A home, Mockbee says, should be a shelter for the soul as well as the body.
His students do all the work themselves—from the design to the pounding of nails. They literally live for an entire semester in this impoverished county that's an hour from the closest movie theater.
Mockbee says Rural Studio is a far cry from normal college life, where you attend classes with fellow students a couple times a week. At Rural Studio, they live together, cook together, eat together, and create wonderful homes together. The studio is a converted 1890s farmhouse.
Over the years, Mockbee's students have built chapels, basketball courts, and several homes, including a wonderful 850-square-foot home from hay bales. Alberta and Shepard Bryant, proud owners of this new home, were living with three grandkids in a leaky shack with no plumbing until Mockbee and his students showed up.
The students also built a backyard smokehouse out of broken concrete curbing and multicolored glass. Ringing in at a mere $20, the smokehouse where Shepard smokes fish is beautiful, with light coming through the colorful glass. As Mockbee says, “We take something that is very ordinary and make it extraordinary.”
His goal? “I want to jump into the dark and see where I land.” It is the only way.
People Who Live Big
BRUCE POON TIP
Not Leaving Footprints, but Leaving a Legacy
I WAS BORN TO BE AN EXPLORER. THERE WAS NEVER ANY DECISION TO MAKE. I COULDN'T DO ANYTHING ELSE AND BE HAPPY.
—Roy Chapman Andrews
Ten years ago, when Bruce Poon Tip decided to start his own adventure travel company, he could have focused on the fact he was only twenty-three years old, a virtual kid in the eyes of most potential customers. Or he could have dwelled on the fact that he'd been fired from the only two jobs he'd ever had—Denny's when he was sixteen and McDonald's a few months later. Or he could have remembered that the last business he tried, a mail order company selling yarn bookmarks that told the weather, was closed down by his school principal because his classmates were skipping school to fill orders.
But instead of “facing facts,” this gutsy entrepreneur said, “I know I can,” and launched what turned out to be a revolutionary leader in the booming travel industry.
Not only is Poon Tip's Toronto-based G.A.P. Adventures a money-making leader (it pulled down a cool $16 million last year and consistently ranks in Canada's Profit 100, an annual ranking of fastest growing companies), but it lives the socially responsible philosophy it promotes.
“Leaving no footprints,” a common mantra for ecotourism operators, is not good enough for G.A.P. Yes, Poon Tip limits his trips to twelve people, relies solely on local transportation—trains, horses, dugout canoes—and insists on staying in small guesthouses and B&Bs, but he also makes sure his “footprints” make a tangible difference in the lives of the people he works with. Thanks to Poon Tip, the Pimpilala Indians, a small tribe in the rainforest of Ecuador, have been able to purchase sacred tribal land. No longer having to rely on logging to survive, the tribe has been able to halt oil and mining exploration that was stripping their lands.
All G.A.P. clients are offered the chance to “adopt” a kid from the country they visit.
And if trips do not follow Poon Tip's environmental, ethical, and social codes, he'll dump them—even if they are successful. A popular gorilla tracking trip to Uganada, one of Poon Tip's bestsellers, was canceled when it became apparent that tour operators he worked with weren't treating guides fairly. Another time, he pulled out of Burma when government officials wouldn't let him work with—and therefore benefit—local people.
Back at the office, Poon Tip also lives his noble views. All seventy-five employees start with four weeks vacation. Each gets a free trip a year. And to follow the low-impact philosophy, each employee gets a free bus pass or is encouraged to walk, copy paper is used on both sides, and Poon Tip pays nearly double for fair market coffee.
Poon Tip's decision to Live Big all started after two mind-opening trips to Thailand.
“The first, an expensive five-star bus tour, led me to believe that Thailand was filled with yuppies and fancy hotels. I went back, and on my own for $5 a day, discovered hill tribes and small villages. I saw the real Thailand. I realized on the first tour I'd been trapped in a Western environment. I figured others might want the same thing I did,” he says.
He was right. The company has grown exponentially in ten years. And while it might be tempting to rest on his laurels, Poon Tip just launched an adventure television series, the pilot following a ten-day trek through Borneo, at the Bampf film festival.
Young, ballsy, and unwilling to fit into ruts, Poon Tip is a visionary, and his mission is nothing short of “saving the world.” He's an advisor to the World Bank in Washington, and his ethical beliefs earned him last year's Ethics in Action award.
He knows it's not enough to have big cars and big homes (although he certainly lives life with joie de vivre—he flew fifty of his closest friends to Ecuador for his wedding last year at a remote resort, a three-hour boat ride away from Coca, in the middle of the rain forest). What matters to Poon Tip is making a difference, leaving a legacy, making the world a better place.
People Who Live Big
BEV SANDERS
Helping Annie Oakley Sing, “Anything You Can Do...”
NOT OFTEN IN LIFE WE DO WE GET OPPORTUNITIES TO MAKE A CHANGE AND WE SHOULD THINK OF IT THAT WAY ... AS AN OPPORTUNITY RATHER THAN AN OBSTACLE.
—Bev Sanders
When Bev Sanders was in high school, her dad gave her an office job in his driving school. “Forget college,” he said. “Girls don't need an education. What will you do with it once you get married?”
Even though she loved her dad and understood that he was only the product of his generation, Bev quite wisely packed her bags and moved west.
She got a job in Lake Tahoe teaching skiing, a passion she'd had since childhood. That bold move, that decision to abandon old ways of thinking and leap into a new possibility, set the stage for an incredibly big life.
Not only did she start one of the first companies to design and manufacture snowboards, but she is doing everything within her power to change the way women see themselves—particularly when it comes to sports.
“Look at the ads. Even today, 99 percent of them