In this Milkshake, Design Milk speaks to interior architect Candace Rimes about her time at Auburn University's Rural Studio, dream clients, designing locally, and more.

As director of interior architecture at Fogarty Finger and the head of the firm?s Atlanta office, Candace Rimes has designed environments for clients including Nike, Rockefeller Group, and Slater Hospitality. In this week?s Milkshake, we talked to her about how she builds her practice: how she ensures that her design world expands rather than shrinks with time ? reusing familiar ideas, practices, and motifs ? and how her time at Auburn University?s acclaimed Rural Studio has informed her priority of building relationships with the members of the communities who share their lives with her buildings.
?I would say that the Rural Studio instilled in me that as designers, we have a responsibility to better our communities ? to feel personally responsible, not only for the spaces and the buildings that we design, but the way people experience them and how they feel inside of our spaces,? says Rimes. The Rural Studio, which was founded in 1993, was intended to interrogate the relationship between architects and designers and those who inhabit their buildings, especially given its location in Hale County, Alabama, where many residents live in poverty. ?I try to remember a quote by Samuel Mockbee, founder of the Rural Studio, that architecture has to be greater than just architecture. And I think carrying ...