Natural Building Intensive Open House & Graduation Ceremony

We are excited to announce the upcoming open house and graduation ceremony for our Summer 2009 Natural Building Intensive program next Friday August 21st. The Natural Building Intensive (NBI) is a unique 12-week course of study that brings together a collaborative group of experienced and enthusiastic instructors with students in an in-depth, hands-on experience in natural building, from the design and planning stages through the finishing touches. The open house is from 4-5pm at the project site, located on Jones Rd in Warren (off Plunkton Rd) at the Brodeur residence, and reflects what is capable in current natural building technology. The open house will be followed by a graduation ceremony for its 10 participants from 5-6pm. The building is an innovative, cutting-edge sustainable design/build project, featuring a hand-cut timber frame cut from local timber, a super-insulated roof system, and straw bale walls finished with natural lime and clay plasters. In addition, there are the added amenities of a masonry Rumford-style fireplace, radiant concrete floors, and natural daylighting features. For anyone interested in affordable and sustainable construction this would be a great opportunity to talk with students and instructors alike, as well as the owner, who are sure to offer both informative and diverse perspectives on the subject. In addition, as one work culminates another must begin; thus, we are currently soliciting a client for next year’s build. This person or group should already be considering a small scale building for the following year, and could see their project being enhanced by the inclusion of natural building methods.

Matt O'Connell's 7/22 Lecture Online

Continuous Transformations: Something Old, Something New in Making Next Generation Buildings with Matt O'Connell
This talk presents highlights from twenty years of transforming buildings and discusses the specific mechanics of integrating the design and construction processes with examples from collaborations that produced dynamic environments at various scales, from rooms to buildings and landscapes.


http://blip.tv/file/2445150

Testimonial: Ben Griffin

In January of 2009, I officially incorporated my first small business, Greener Living Inc., a company focused on natural and green building; home energy audits and weatherization; as well as an educational component of teaching workshops. The most significant event that led me to starting my own business involved the 11 week Natural Building Intensive program at Yestermorrow. There were many experiences during the course that seemed to prepare me for the next steps of becoming an entrepreneur. Most importantly, the training I received gave me the confidence that I could pursue natural building as a career. Secondly, I saw individuals pursuing their passions in sustainable ways, and making a good living. Thirdly, I now had more tangible experience and relevant references to present to potential clients. With a certificate from a reputable institution and instructors who could, and happily would, vouch for my experience, skill, and ability I felt much more confident in marketing myself.

I left Yestermorrow at the end of July 2008 with a renewed positivity that I could make a living doing what I love and that earning money didn't have to harm the environment. I felt more confident than ever that I possessed the skills and knowledge to provide valuable insight and quality work to my clients. Furthermore, I had gained more awareness of how to run a business from engaging in many conversations with the instructors of the program. Perhaps most of all, I simply felt inspired, positive, and full of energy to take action, whatever direction that might have been.

Mosaics class at Yestermorrow

I took a break from my kitchen and garden duties a few weekends ago to take the mosaics class. We were all able to go from start to finish on a project through the weekend and I decided I'd use my newly learned skill to spruce up the unisex bathroom in the lobby as one of my intern projects. I just finished and installed them. The artistic tiles were donated by one of my classmates.

Mosaics are not terribly difficult to create, though there are time intensive. Aside from their relative ease , I love mosaics for their bright and colorful use of garbage. Most of the materials are broken mugs, plates or random colorful bits that are scavenged and kept out of the wastestream. This past weekend we had one of our instructors and an artist create an art installation using reclaimed materials--garbage otherwise. The regenerative nature of recycled materials art is really attractive to me: in addition to materials being reclaimed and kept out of the waste strem, out of garbage comes something beautiful.

Dan Reicher Lecture Review

Dan Reicher, the director of Energy and Climate Initiatives at Google, spoke last night at Yestermorrow to an "overflow crowd of summer program students, area professionals and interested public," as part of the free summer lecture series. He previewed an array of Google sponsored R&D projects that deal specifically with energy consumption and alternative fuel. For more read these two reviews by Design Cultivation and Light Amber. Watch the lecture online at: http://blip.tv/file/2446293.

Art in the English Garden

Despite some epic rain (clearly Vermont is not the only place experiencing an extremely wet summer), our student in the Art in the English Garden course with instructor Thea Alvin had a wonderful time and pulled off an amazing project while also visiting some amazing gardens, seeing the local sites, and enjoing tea and scones! Full slideshow to come, but here's a glimpse of the final product...

Tonight! Dan Reicher from Google at Yestermorrow

Dan Reicher, Director of Energy and Climate Initiatives at Google, former Assistant Secretary of Energy, and Obama Transition Team member will be at Yestermorrow tonight at 7pm to talk about the current state of play in energy and climate technology, policy and investment. He will discuss Google's increasing focus in the energy world and the critical role of Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley including the massive energy stimulus package.

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.

Forest Management on Campus

Those of you who've visited Yestermorrow's campus know that one of the things we have an abundance of here are trees. Of our 38-acre campus, about 22 acres are in woodland. When Yestermorrow purchased the property in 1990, the hillside had been previously logged, and had grown back in a mixture of pine, hemlock and some mixed hardwoods at the upper parts of the slope. Over the past 10 years we've harvested a handful of trees in our Stump to Sticker classes and milled them up for use in projects around campus. We also harvested nearly 10,000 board feet of pine last year from around the Chalet for use in our Natural Building Intensive class project at Knoll Farm.

This year we've taken a new fresh look at our forest management plan in anticipation of clearing a new cabin site on the north edge of our campus. As a result, we've decided to bring in a local logger to harvest a number of pines which we'll be able to mill and use for upcoming projects. At the same time, we'll clear space for a new 2 room cabin and our new fabric formed concrete structure. It makes sense for us to cut many of the surrounding mature pines at the same time, before they get too big to safely harvest (especially once the new cabins are in the way), and concentrate the inevitable disruption at one time. All in all we'll harvest 40-50 pines and a number of smaller poplars along the northern border of the campus in the next week or so.

While it'll be hard to see these big beautiful trees go when the skidder and chipper are here, we're looking forward to the long term possibilities that will result from the harvest. We will work to transition this mature pine stand into a mixed hardwood forest. The area opened up by the clearing is an ideal location for future food forest development especially in the form of large nut trees and hardwoods like oaks, walnuts, hickories, and chestnuts with some fruit trees along the edge of the meadow. The upcoming forest management activity represents an opportunity to stimulate real action on regenerative land transition on campus and move forward with our larger goals of campus master planning incorporating Permaculture principles.

Yestermorrow is looking for a cob building project

Yestermorrow is looking for a community client for our upcoming Introduction to Cob Building course September 6-12th. Cob is a combination of clay sediment, sand, and straw mixed together with water and hand formed into walls to create an affordable, safe and ecologically sound method of construction. This 6-day Yestermorrow course is looking for a project site in the Mad River Valley where we could build a small structure or create infill walls in an existing structure. Typically cob walls are finished with an earthen plaster after the cob has dried thoroughly. Potential projects could include a small shed, chicken coop, or garden wall which incorporates a door and windows. The community client is responsible for preparing the project site and paying for the cost of building materials, but all student and instructor labor is provided at no charge to the client.

If you know of a potential project for the upcoming Cob Building course, or would like to find out more information, please call José Galarza, Community Outreach Coordinator, at Yestermorrow: 802-496-5545 or by email at jose@yestermorrow.org.

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.

A few summer shots

We've posted a few new photo albums on our Picasa site from summer classes and just neat happenings around campus- check it out!

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 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 ($150). AIA continuing education credits available. Call 888-496-5541 for more information or Register Online. Click here for the planned workshop and conference schedule.

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!"