New Yestermorrow Video

We're thrilled to announce that a new video featuring Yestermorrow is up on the msn.com site "A Guide to Healthier Living". Their film crew was here in February to capture some shots from the Woodworking Intensive and the certificate course Ecological Design in the Built Environment. Combined with some archive footage and shots from the 2009 Natural Building Intensive, it gives a great overview of what the school is all about.
Check it out at http://healthyliving.msn.com/default.aspx?section=video&contentType=video&contentId=98&source=MSNeditorial.

John Ringel Lecture 7/15 online

Thoughts on Designing Additions:
From Context to Content and Intention to Invention

Topic Summary:
An “addition” attempts to transform an “existing condition”--with its unique history---into a new configuration for the present owner’s future aspirations. The Design has to account for the existing context with all its foibles, implications and technical challenges. The Design has to articulate the present intentions both stated and implied. The Design becomes an invention—a product of the imagination—that will be a future owners’ existing condition. This lecture will reflect, with examples, on some of the speaker’s experiences “adding on” to numerous residences over the years. It will also show as an example the currently Proposed Yestermorrow Design/Build School Shop Addition.

Bio:
John Ringel has been a design/builder since 1972 when he co-founded Jersey Devil design/build firm with Steve Badanes. His natural propensities led him to concerns of sun, site, and energy in buildings. He has specialized in energy and sustainable design and has design/built numerous homes, additions, and alterations to existing residences. John has taught at Yestermorrow since 1990.

New video! Lecture by Jacob Deva Racusin

Check out the 7/8 summer lecture by Jacob Deva Racusin on Bridging the Gap: Bringing Together the Worlds of Natural and Green Building at http://blip.tv/file/2394709. He discusses how the modern natural building movement has been growing slowly but steadily for decades across the globe, yet much misunderstanding still remains about its form, function, purpose, and potential. The growth of the green building movement has helped increase awareness of energy efficiency, building performance, and ecological sensitivity. Developments in natural building and design in our cold climate are addressing these concerns, while continuing to support core issues of social and ecological justice and affordability. Come find out how the natural and green building movements can - and must - learn from and work with each other to reach mutual goals.

Jacob Deva Racusin is co-owner of New Frameworks Natural Building, a Vermont-based contracting and consulting business specializing in the integration of natural materials, holistic design principles, and intentional process to create high performance structures of beauty. Jacob has been creating functional art with wood, stone, straw, earth, and other found materials since 2000, when he began design and construction on a solar-oriented straw bale house in Montgomery, Vermont, in which he lives with his family. He has led Yestermorrow's Natural Building Intensive program in 2008 and 2009.

Stay tuned to http://www.yestermorrow.blip.tv/ for each week's public lectures, or join us in person at the School at 7pm on Wednesdays through the end of August. For a full schedule of the Summer Lecture Series, please visit www.yestermorrow.org/Lecture09.htm.

Summer Lecture Series video online

We're thrilled to have our summer lecture series video online now thanks to volunteer Cornelius Murphy! We'll be posting the presentations weekly on the new channel at www.yestermorrow.blip.tv. Check it out! You can also subscribe via RSS feed or iTunes to get notification of new videos as they're posted.

Click here for the first lecture from 6/24 with Jeff Parsons and Jared W. Poor from Beeken Parsons furnituremaking studio in Shelburne, VT on "What Were We Thinking? Reflections on how Place, Personality and Process Influence Furniture Design at Beeken Parsons"

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 and posted online at http://www.yestermorrow.blip.tv.

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:


or you can watch the individual presenters in short clips at: http://yestermorrow.blip.tv.

Yestermorrow Video Featured on Sustainable Route

Check out a short 3-minute interview with Yestermorrow Outreach Director Dan Eckstein on Sustainable Route, a project by two recent Bennington College graduates who are travelling the country to explore the 'sustainable' movement. (p.s. you'll need the latest version of QuickTime to view the video).