Lessons in How to Play With Fire Stacy Sodolak for The New York Times Jack Sanders, an architectural designer and teacher in Austin, Tex., led a three-day "Heavy Metal" design-build camp last month. AUSTIN, TEX. - Jack Sanders discovered the Newbern Tigers, a century-old sandlot baseball club from the tiny town of Newbern, Ala., one spring weekend in 1998. He was in his second year at the Rural Studio, the breakaway design-build program at Auburn University run by Samuel Mockbee, which paired architecture students with the state's poorest residents (mostly citizens of Newbern) to create houses and community projects as individual as the folks they were made for. Made from donated, recycled and found materials, these soulful, lovely buildings are now some of the most celebrated architectural monuments of the rural South; in 2000, Sambo, as Mr. Mockbee was known, won a MacArthur "genius" grant for the studio's work, just a year before he died of complications from leukemia. Mr. Sanders had already been deeply imprinted with Mr. Mockbee's ideas about ethics, architecture and community - the Rural Studio practice was immersive, and students lived (and partied) together - when he met a local ne'er-do-well at the Piggly Wiggly and found himself drinking beer, eating fried catfish and watching "a whole other kind of baseball" than he had grown up playing in Fort Worth. "It was all about playing loose, having fun and improvising with what you had," said Mr. Sanders, now 36. Elders sat on an old refrigerator laid on its side, and the backstop was made from chicken wire. Mr. Sanders was invited to play, and he spent three and a half seasons with the club, as the second white guy on the team (and the only player under 30). In 2002, the steel pipe-and-chain-link backstop he and two other students made for the Tigers was one of three Rural Studio entries at the Whitney Biennial. The lessons Mr. Sanders took away from his time with the Tigers - play loose, improvise and have some fun - are all wrapped up in what he calls his sandlot philosophy, which is the engine behind his design practice in Austin. The Tigers story is also a roundabout way of explaining why Mr. Sanders was leading what he called Heavy Metal camp a few weeks ago. The three-day design-build workshop, where five strangers learned the vagaries of welding against a backbeat of outlaw country music, was held at Mr. Sanders's studio, a modest ranch house on five acres of scrub and pecan trees to which he has added a circus tent and a batting cage. It was focused on metal work, as many of his projects are, he said, because the Tigers's backstop was a metal project, and because wood and metal are ranchers" materials. And this is Texas, after all. To an Easterner, Mr. Sanders, who sports a short-brimmed Stetson like L.B.J. and a circuitous conversational style, seems very Texan. But first, the camp rules. "Never panic," Mr. Sanders announced. That's pretty critical. Sparks are flying. It's loud. People get into trouble from overreacting to the sparks. Don't be self-conscious about an idea, that's another one. Things take place right beyond your comfort zone. And right beyond that is injury or death. He grinned at the participants. There was Victoria Carpenter, 20, one of Mr. Sanders's students at the University of Texas (wearing black coveralls and red bandanna); Kathryn Beane, 34, a television producer from Atlanta (Braves baseball cap and vintage boots of unknown provenance); Claire Warren, 37, a video producer from Austin (denim shirt and vintage Fryes); and Brad Walton, 45, a furniture designer and artist (black T-shirt and lace-up boots), also from Austin. This reporter - reading glasses and Blundstones - was the fifth. All the campers said they were eager to work with their hands; some ventured they were hoping to shake the tree a bit, career and otherwise. Mr. Sanders's company, Design Build Adventure, makes elegant steel kitchens and furniture, rugged landscape elements, hipster hotels (like El Cosmico, a yurt, tepee and trailer complex in Marfa), conventional houses (like the "sandlot" renovation of a cottage for John Spong, a Texas Monthly editor), treehouses (the filmmaker Richard Linklater has one), high-style chicken coops and public art, among other things. "The adventure part is trying to replicate the wonder and spirit and all that we had at the Rural Studio," Mr. Sanders said. Sambo joked that it was all downhill from there. I took that as a personal challenge that it wouldn't be downhill, and that the adventure doesn't end. Heavy Metal was Mr. Sanders's fourth adventure camp. The first three were in Marfa, where students built playground equipment and made furniture that was auctioned to benefit a food bank. At the Austin workshop, which cost $550, the campers designed and made furniture that was auctioned to benefit the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians. Blending community service, some fine guitar playing by local musicians, food and drink from local establishments and hands-on design and build experience, the camps are Mr. Sanders's way of spreading the Rural Studio manifesto.