The Rural Studio grew from the shared dreams and frustrations of its co-founders, D.K. Ruth and the late Samuel Mockbee (Sambo). Both lamented the intellectual abstraction prevalent in architectural education, as well as the inability of the profession and the academy to address the needs of the poverty-stricken rural communities in the Southeastern United States. Their solution was a revolutionary combination of hands-on service learning pedagogy and architectural innovation. Their goal was to instill in young architects a sense of social responsibility, and to challenge the status-quo of industrialized, cookie-cutter "affordable" architecture.

With an initial grant from the Alabama Power Foundation, Mockbee and Ruth brought a handful of architectural students to live and work in Hale County, Alabama. In Mockbee's words, students "crossed the threshold" of preconceptions and prejudice to come face-to-face with the realities of poverty and the real people who lived it.

Out of that face-to-face encounter grew the principles which would become characteristic of the Rural Studio’s work in Hale County: compassion, ingenuity and imagination.