The Rural Studio second year class of 2006 was presented with the task of moving St. Lukes Episcopal Church from it’s current site to it’s original location. The church was moved from Cahawba, the previous state capital for Alabama, to it’s current site located in Martin Station, Alabama. Cahawba has been an ongoing project for the Cahawba Advisory Committee, and the plans are to reveal the history of the city in the form of archaeological relics and various restorations of buildings. The CAC has no real plan to carry out these tasks and no master plan for the park as a whole either. Most of Cahawba is now located in the flood plains which rise up to 10 feet in some areas every few years. This of course creates problems for us as we plan to move the church back to it’s home.

Throughout the course of the semester we plan to give the CAC a better idea of how to carry out the plans for the park which may include a master plan of the park. We also plan to propose a site in Cahawba that will best suit the church. Research and development has been in progress to form a cataloging system to take inventory on all the pieces in such a manner that we will be able to put them back together again. As we take the church apart we will make CAD drawings depicting the imperfections of each piece so that each individual piece on the church is accounted for. We will also document the church by taking precise pictures and drawings by hand. By the end of the semester we will have taken the church apart and stored the pieces on site, and have poured the foundation on the new site. Next semesters class will pick up where we will have left off by rebuilding the church on the foundation we poured. Undoubtedly we will continue to run into various setbacks that were not planned for and we will continue to keep you updated in the blogspace of our daily activities.