2009 Summer Lecture Series

Yestermorrow is pleased to announce the 10th Annual Summer Lecture Series starting Wednesday, June 24th and continuing Wednesday evenings at 7pm through the end of August. The lecture series features a wide range of professionals related to the field of design/build speaking on topics as diverse as clean energy technology, compost, furnituremaking, real estate development, energy efficiency, natural building and much more.
For a full lineup of speakers and topics can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/kk6sgg
Please join us!
p.s. lectures will also be videotaped and shown on Channel 44 here in the Mad River Valley.

Pecha Kucha comes to Yestermorrow

We had a wonderful time Saturday night at Yestermorrow's Board and Faculty meeting. Good meetings during the day, a wonderful dinner by Heidi, Carrie and Austin, and then Yestermorrow's first ever Pecha Kucha (pronounced pe-chak-cha). The concept comes from the Japanese word for "chit chat" and this idea has been sweeping the design world by storm over the past few years. The idea is to see a lot of work in a short period of time, so each presenter can choose only 20 slides, and gets 20 seconds to say whatever they want to say about each one. We had 14 presenters, including Paul Hanke, Matt O'Connell, Josh Jackson, Mac Rood, Kathy Meyer, Skip Dewhirst, Ace McArleton, Monica DiGiovanni, Hilary Russell, Rich Montena, Keith Giamportone, Jeff Schoellkopf, Dave Sellers, Tyler Kobick, and Chris Cook (for WMAP). It was a classic demonstration of the diversity of the Yestermorrow community, showing work ranging from boatbuilding to historic preservation to timberframing to furniture to large scale architecture to hydropower to photography to food!

I've combined all the slides into two short (10 minute) videos:


It's split into two halves- for Part 2 click on:

Yestermorrow to host fabric formed concrete course

Yestermorrow and the School of Architecture and Art at Norwich University are co-sponsoring a one-week program in concrete construction. The course is built around the annual workshop of ISOFF (The International Society of Fabric Formers) which is geared towards educators, practitioners, and students. Around the globe, from cutting-edge research in universities and institutes, to contractors and architects working in the field, fabric forming is a significant new force in concrete construction.
This one-week event will bring together the world's leading innovators in the field to share techniques and strategies, while forming and pouring a series of concrete architectural components that allow for high efficiency, thermally massive, durable and sustainable structures. Participants will tour local architecture projects that use fabric form work and examine case studies to learn about the science and art of building with concrete.
The workshop will be held at Yestermorrow August 24-28 and is being co-sponsored by The School of Architecture and Art at Norwich University. Participants can register for the full week-long program ($1,200) or a one day Friday session, which includes hands-on casting and tour of local structures ($200). AIA continuing education credits available. Call 888-496-5541 for more information.

The chickens are here!

Our new chickens have arrived this morning! A dozen pullets raised by YM alum Cathy Rubacalba. Check out this sweet mobile coop built by our interns over the past two weeks. Once these little guys get a little bigger, we're looking forward to collecting our own homegrown eggs every morning!

The crew and the chicken tractor

More photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/yestermorrowschool/Coop#

Welcome new interns!

Yestermorrow welcomed two new interns on May 18th. They have survived the past 2 weeks and are already hard at work!

Karie Reinertson--Originally from Santa Barbara, CA, Karie has lived in nearly every major city on the east and west coasts, most recently Washington, DC. While working for the Landscape Architecture Foundation, an environmental design non-profit in DC, she realized that she needed to find out more about the type of design projects she was funding, hands-on. LAF supported this decision and Karie went to southern Spain to learn straw bale building and, after another stint with LAF, she learned cob building in the Costa Rican rain forest. She’s traveled extensively throughout the United States, Southeast Asia, parts of Central America, Europe, and Egypt. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2003 and hopes to start graduate architecture school in 2010, focusing on responsible community design/build in Latin America.

Tim Terway-- Tim joins Yestermorrow from Brooklyn, NY where he was working on ecological and urban regeneration strategies including the NYC reforestation plan, an industrial ecology and development vision for the Southwest Brooklyn waterfront, and a cultural preservation plan for the bioregionally-dependent Maasai tribes of Southern Kenya. Originally from the anthracite coal lands of Pottsville, Pennsylvania and trained as a landscape architect and city planner, he has been to 5 continents while working to reconcile the design of cities with the natural systems they're dependent on in the wake of unprecedented resource challenges. Tim will use his time at Yestermorrow to immerse himself in the beauty of learning by doing while accepting that he'll no longer have an excuse to not help is dad with any building project imaginable.

Garden Updates on Ethicurean

Check out Kitchen/Garden Intern Stephanie Pierce's update on the Ethicurean blog about her experiences so far in the Yester-garden...

http://www.ethicurean.com/2009/05/28/strawbale-coldframe/

YM Alum Guthrie Smith Shares Her Story

From 2007 Home Design/Build graduate Guthrie Smith:

"Ever since I was a child, I had planned to build a house. In 1975, pregnant with my first child, I built a log cabin in Huntington woods with my partner. Sixteen years later, when I was trying to move back to Vermont, I took the summer to build a cabin with my husband-to-be (I didn’t know it at the time) in Belvidere as a retreat for me and my four children. That same year I heard about Yestermorrow and wanted in the worst way to take a class there! I really never let go of that idea, and another sixteen years later, when it was time to build a REAL house, it was clear that the Home Design/Build class was finally going to happen for me.

I came to the class with enthusiasm, motivation to learn and do, and some bare-minimum skills in the building area. I left with a great house design and the ability to make designs, some more and better building skills, and some great ideas. The class was amazing – working all day and sometimes into the night with others, all of us focused on our own visions. I learned from everyone, not just the instructors. The most important thing I got from taking the class was the confidence and excitement to actually take what I had begun and make it into what would end up my home!

I waited many years for the right time to take this class, and as much as I looked forward to it, I could never have imagined it being quite as helpful and life-changing as it was! I was involved in every aspect of the design of the house, practicing my newly-acquired drafting skills, and tried my hand at as much as I felt able to do in the building process. During the year of building, I did some basic carpentry work, window and door trim, laid and cut tile. Now, among other things, I’m making some shelves and cabinets, a result of another great Yestermorrow class!"