ABSTRACT
In 1967, the first-year class of graduate students at the Yale School of Architecture
travelled to an isolated region of Kentucky to build a community centre they designed
for impoverished families in a hamlet called New Zion. The project was an unprece-
dented experiment in learning-by-doing and community service that was one of the
innovations in graduate education introduced by architect Charles W. Moore during his
tenure as chairman of Yale’s department of architecture. Yale students went on to
build three more projects in Appalachia during the following years. These efforts in
hands-on learning initiated a program that recently celebrated its fortieth anniversary:
the Yale Building Project, which has become an important component of architectural
education at Yale and has served as a model for ‘design-build’ programs at numerous
North American schools of architecture (Hayes 2007).
