Redefining the Rural Experience: Change for the People of the Appalachian Mountains, Magoffin County Crafts, Social, and Health Services Center Gifford, Kentucky

As an introductory attempt to develop improvements within economically challenged Magoffin County, Kentucky, and explore the relationship of program to an individual’s life, craft, social, and health initiatives would be introduced to the residents. A community would evolve where locals could receive education, have access to daycare, purchase food at discount prices, engage in indigenous craft making, and visit professional doctors in the health clinic and urgent care center. Done in order to facilitate individual advancement and community growth, this design will support social integration by allowing people to share the resources needed to end the problem of generational and cyclical poverty. This is done through a design that purposefully separates architectural incidents from intentions. By applying different design methods, and using natural resources abundant in this area of the Appalachian Mountains, the forms start to relate to each other, and to the building’s users. In turn, it is intended that the residents will respond to the architecture and to the created environment, and be challenged to move beyond their immediate realities