With the assistance of the Hale County Department of Human Resources, the Rural Studio selected the Sanders-Dudley family as clients for a new home. The family has six children. The Sanders-Dudley house encompasses 1500 sq.ft. and has 3 bedrooms, 2 _ bathrooms, a kitchen-family room, a den and a dining room. The family gathering spaces open onto a central courtyard which is bathed in light at sunrise and sunset. The house is designed to accommodate the many different needs of such a large family, attempting to give children and parents adequate private space, but at the same time creating rooms that foster family interaction. Great consideration was given to daily activities such as preparation for school so that the house might ease the hectic task of raising six children. The material pallet employs rammed-earth for all exterior walls, a steel roof structure, metal studs and sheet-rock on the interior, and an abundance of glass and transparent sheets of poly-carbonate in clerestory windows above eight feet and window-walls surrounding the courtyard.

Rammed earth construction, chosen for the Sanders-Dudley house, is a building technique in which a cement-soil mixture is compacted into forms to create load-bearing walls that harden into what is essentially man-made, engineered rock. Rammed earth was chosen for the construction method because of its durability, its natural resistance to fire and tornado and its sense of permanence and security. The students have researched the rammed earth method through books and government publications, consultation with experienced contractors and extensive tests and mock-ups. Except for some experimental housing built in the 1930’s near Birmingham, AL, this is the first house in the Southeast to use this method of construction.