Elevate Something Ordinary to Something Extraordinary.

The affection that the students develop for the families is reciprocal. Carlissia Bryant, 16, was in fourth grade when the students built a house for her grandparents, Alberta and Shepard Bryant, who are now in their 70s. At the time, the Bryants -- including Carlissia and two of her siblings -- were living in a shack with a leaky roof, no indoor plumbing, and no insulation. Alberta, whose legs had been amputated due to poor circulation, had difficulty getting around the dwelling in her wheelchair. Now the Bryants live in an 850-square-foot house with yellow columns, a long front porch, and easy wheelchair accessibility for Alberta.

When it was time for the students who had built the house to leave, Carlissia remembers, "We stood in the middle of the road to keep them from going. My grandmother cried. They told us they were going to come back and visit, and we said, 'Come back all the time.' "

Mockbee, too, finds that his life becomes pleasantly entangled with the lives of studio clients, including the Bryants. Besides his work as an architect, Mockbee is an artist who uses collage, watercolor, and oil paint. (An exhibit was on display at a gallery in New York this fall.) One haunting, somewhat abstract oil painting features Alberta Bryant in her wheelchair, as well as some pet turtles that she keeps in plastic tubs on her front porch. On a more prosaic level, Carlissia reports that Mockbee is fond of napping in a particular chair in the Bryants' living room. When he brings visitors by to see the house, Carlissia says, "he loves to get a little snooze in."

Jeff Johnston and Bruce Lanier, members of a five-person team of students that spent last year building a farmer's market in the nearby town of Thomaston, also became attached to the people they encountered. "Several members of the community came by and helped us out when we needed trailers or trucks," says Johnston, 23. "And they fed us. A guy named Packer was the first person to cook for us. He and his friend Pud brought a fish cooker out, fired it up, and fried catfish for us. We were sitting on the back of a truck, drinking beer and frying catfish."

Community members also opened up their homes to students -- to a truly extraordinary degree. The night that Thomaston's mayor, Patsy Summeral, invited the students for dinner after a long, hot day of work, she offered them the chance to take showers before they ate. When he emerged from the bathroom, the 25-year-old Lanier remembers, "she had three sets of clothes laid out -- three pairs of shorts here, three T-shirts here, and three pairs of tightie whities here. The tightie whities had come out of her husband's underwear drawer." Though Lanier appreciatively donned a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, he found himself unable to accept the full extent of Summeral's generosity. "I just can't wear someone else's underwear," he explains. "I had to go without that night."

When the market's construction was completed, Johnston and Lanier's work culminated with an opening celebration -- including a parade and fireworks -- on the Fourth of July. Hundreds of people turned out, and Johnston and Lanier found themselves leading the parade. "All the kids in town were there," Lanier says. "We had a bullhorn and were waving around the flag, and there was some guy driving a four-wheeler with three kids on it waving flags all over. There's only one block to the town, so we started at one end and went to the other end." The brevity of the experience did not detract from its thrill, according to Johnston. "They blocked off the street for us, and it was Alabama highway, so that was pretty cool," he says.

Steve Hoffman, 25, who finished his undergraduate work in the spring of 1997 and who now works at the studio as an instructor, was personally inspired by the work that he and his teammates did with community member Robert Wilson. Hoffman's team, with the help of Wilson himself, built a public pavilion on Wilson's land in the town of Akron, Alabama. "I've never met anyone like him," Hoffman says of Wilson, who is in his late sixties. "He left Akron to work on the railroad when he was 14 years old, and he went all over the United States following work. When he left, Akron had three hotels, the train was coming through and stopping, and there was commerce from the river. Now it's nothing. And his family's land, which was an active farm, is completely overgrown. Robert has had a real broad experience, he's worked hard, and now he's back -- devoting himself to reclaiming his family's land. Every day, he's out there at five in the morning, clearing timber, making roads."