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!"

Filipino Design/Build Project

Check out this great design/build project in the Phillipines led by Yestermorrow instructor and board member Kyle Bergman and his longtime friend and collaborator Jim Hubbell. This project is part of their ongoing Pacific Rim Parks project and has been a design/build process involving Filipino architecture students over the past month. There are lots more amazing images on their blog: http://www.prppearls.blogspot.com/. The posts are chronological, so if you want to start at the beginning, go to the bottom of the page and scroll up.

A Hands-on Revolution- Financial Times feature

Financial Times- May 23, 2009
A Hands-on Revolution by Madeleine Johnson

A few years ago Jon Biehler took a life-changing bicycle ride through the US state of Maine. He happened upon a school – the Shelter Institute – which would eventually transform him from a teacher into an architect and builder, the sort of man able to put a roof over his own head.

“[I was] already interested in building a house for myself with good construction techniques and a very open feeling [and] I realised that Shelter Institute could give me the knowledge to either contract out or take on whatever portion of the work I wanted,” recalls Biehler, who is based in Germany. “A few summers later, I took their three-week post-and-beam course.”

Enchanted by the school’s surroundings, he bought a nearby plot of land, where he erected a pre-cut 20ft by 40ft post-and-beam structure, which he finished himself, while calling in professionals for wiring and plumbing. Within three summers he had a completed vacation house, garden shed and boat house. And now, after getting “invigorated” by his summer 2008 school project – a frame cabin – he has started work on a year-round retirement home.

Read more... (Yestermorrow story starts a few paragraphs down)

New York Times Article Hits Home

The most emailed story from the New York Times today was "The Case for Working with Your Hands." Our changing economy is one force that is apparently helping the trades look more appealing than many office desk jobs, probably for the first time in several generations. I know that as a young "knowledge worker" I often craved a visible result or a tired body from my workday. This craving, combined with my desire to learn how to approach work in a way that leaves the world a better place rather than a more toxic place, is part of what drove me to the internship program at Yestermorrow.

It's an interesting article that resonated with me when I read it. Enjoy.

New Regenerative Design Course: June 28-July 3

The leading edge of the sustainable building movement is beginning to push the envelope beyond the greening of conventional buildings, into the territory of regenerative design and development -- the process of integrating buildings, communities, and their inhabitants as healthy contributors to the living places of which they are a part. This course begins with the practical essentials of building system integration -- the process required to achieve affordable and effective environmental design. Deeper technical system integration will also be addressed relating to the design of buildings that function as organisms -- net positive energy generators and clean water contributors (Living Buildings).

This new course, to be taught by three pioneers in the fields of sustainable, integrated, and regenerative design -- Bill Reed, John Boecker, and Joel Glanzberg -- will provide a rare opportunity to explore the design world's cutting edge with some of the field's pre-eminent practitioners. Course dates are June 28 to July 3. Click here to learn more about the Regenerative Design & Development course. To register, click here for online registration, email shannon@yestermorrow.org or call us at 888-496-5541.

Permaculture 101

From the great Bioneers.org site:
Permaculture expert Penny Livingston-Stark shows how natural systems can teach us better design practices. Learning to work with the earth not only creates a healthier environment, it also nourishes the people who live in it.

Find more videos like this on Bioneers Community

May 2009 Newsletter Now Online

In this issue...
Student Profile: Mike Horgan
Upcoming Classes
Class Spotlight: Regenerative Design
Bike and Build
Fabric Formed Concrete Conference
Public Information Sessions in NYC and Philadelphia

Visit http://www.yestermorrow.org/pdf/May09newsletter.pdf view the latest Yestermorrow e-newsletter.

Biophilic Design Book Wins Award

Yestermorrow Board member Stephen Kellert's recent book, "Biophilic Design: the Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life" (John Wiley 2008) just won the 2008 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (the PROSE awards) in the Architecture and Urban Planning category. Congrats Stephen!

Instructor Thea Alvin's show opens May 4th

Yestermorrow instructor Thea Alvin (Art of Stone, Art in the English Garden) will debut a show of drawings from her recent trip to China and the calligraphy for it at the Bees Knees in Morrisville, VT. She's also binding books of the story that she wrote home on her trip. May 4th at 6 pm.

Online Auction continues

Yestermorrow's online ART AUCTION continues this week with a piece made by Sarah Phillips entitled "Security Sunscape".

Mixed media collage created from used security envelopes.

The piece measures 9" x 7 3/4" and is signed on the back by the artist.

Approximate value is $290.

Sarah Nicole Phillips is a Toronto born, Brookly-based artist. Sarah has donated this work to Yestermorrow Design/Build School (www.yestermorrow.org) to help us raise funds for our mission to inspire people to create a better, more sustainable world by providing hands-on education that integrates design and craft as a creative, interactive process.

Visit our eBay Giving Works auction site to place your bid today:
http://tinyurl.com/cn4cy9

Images from Stained Glass last week

Interesting NYTimes Article on Earthquake Resistant Strawbale

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/straw-simplicity-quake-resistance/

Dot Earth: Straw + Simplicity = Quake Resistance
By By Andrew C. Revkin
Published: April 6, 2009
A shaky test reveals the strength of a simple design for safe structures in poor places.

Thoughts on Farm Design

A guest blog from Yestermorrow instructor Jesse Selman

Broad Context
A farm is a complex system that involves the movement of vast amounts of mass and energy. This warrants a certain degree of foresight. Most farmers make business plans that look years into the future. A key part of this is the articulation of goals and strategies to achieve those goals. A farm design is a spatial energetic plan that can be anything from a snapshot of the present to a multi-generational road map to a farm for the future. The key is to put goals and strategies into the context of the whole farm, watershed, foodshed, ecology, and community resilience.

Sense of Place
Understanding place begins with information gathering. It means walking the land. Watching the effects of the earth moving around the sun. Seeing wet and dry. Making lists, maps, and diagrams. Watching the animals including humans. (It can be very hard to step outside oneself, especially in the routines of agriculture. Yet it is useful to take time away from the routine in order to get the mental space needed to examine it.) Observation can lead to a deeper understanding of the system beyond what needs to get done. Cows prefer to walk up hill and towards light. People tend to not put things away if the storage place is hard to access. This roof is covered in moss, that one isn’t.

Design is a process
The challenge is applying big picture goals to the complex situation of a real farm. This is not just about a new barn or greenhouse. It is about hopes, dreams, and expectations mixed with budgets, phases, and coordinated steps towards a set of goals. A far-reaching design will create an infrastructure that is adaptable to changes in climate, economy, society, or the changing needs of the farmer and her family. The design process should be set up to mimic the dynamic reality of a farm. Make it flexible, adaptable, and useful when a set of plans gets pulled off the shelf in 10 years. The process itself can create its own benefits, such as the transfer of experience from one person’s mind to a group leading to a more stable system of shared knowledge. Tracking how decisions were made will provide useful information as ideas naturally get revisited.

Good design is the communication of ideas
At my most wonderfully inarticulate moments my wife kindly reminds me of the adage “if you can’t explain something then you don’t understand it.” I believe there are other ways to understand things that don’t involve words, but the concept is very important. The simple act of articulation brings about varied levels of understanding and points of view. It is a way to test ideas and show them to others. Perhaps one articulates the land by mapping it. That act of representing the sensory experience of a place is a powerful way for the designer to see a point of view and test ideas. The result is a sharable view that can be exchanged with apprentices, neighbors, contractors, or lenders. Simple diagrams that show a process or relationship can clarify leverage points and guide decisions of where the effort of time or money should be invested.

Innovation, beauty, and durability
At some point design becomes reality; whether that means a hedgerow or barbed wire fence. For all the practical reasons to take certain actions it can be easy to leave out the simple poetry of a clever, handsomely crafted, and rugged product. I would not consider it superfluous to take the extra time to make something special. A farmer I know recently put up some new paddocks and needed half a dozen gates. He bought some, but the ones he would pass through each day he made himself. They were composed of the left over arched tubular steel from an old greenhouse. He used the curved pieces to make an elegant series of gates that will be enjoyed for years and bring pleasure as he passes through them.

Be humble
Despite all the lofty goals we can throw at any endeavor, I will never forget the wise words once said to me as I fussed over an eighth of an inch while placing a new beam above a pig pen. The farmer watched me squint at my level and rolled her eyes. As she walked away, she called out, “Done is perfect.”

Jesse Selman will co-teach a course on Farm Design/Build this fall (October 25-November 6, 2009) at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, VT. He approaches green building and design with over a decade of experience growing food and creating and managing sustainable farmscapes. In 2003, he created Small Farm Builder offering sustainable agriculture infrastructure design and a pedagogical building experience to non-profits and small farms. He has worked with numerous farms on master plans, infrastructure implementation, housing, root cellars & farm structures. As a farmer and educator his experience ranges from animal husbandry to watershed stewardship. He currently works at Coldham & Hartman Architects - a firm committed to ecologically intelligent design – while pursuing his graduate studies in architecture.

A great quote from Vitruvius

Our Board Chair and Instructor Mac Rood recently sent along this great quote from the first century Roman architect Vitruvius in his introduction to The Ten Books of Architecture. I think it articulates well the importance of the design/build approach-- clearly something which is not new, but in fact reflects an ancient practice.

The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgment that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory. Practice is the continuous and regular exercise of employment where manual work is done with any necessary material according to the design of the drawing. Theory, on the other hand, is the ability to demonstrate and explain the productions of dexterity on the principles of proportion.

It follows, therefore, that architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both, like men armed at all point, have the sooner attained their object and carried authority with them.

Courses for AIA Sustainable Design Credit

Yestermorrow Design/Build School offers architects an excellent opportunity to take classes to fulfill their AIA requirements. This is an opportune time to build on a firm’s strengths, add to employees’ areas of competence, or fill in gaps in skills. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) requires that all members participate in continuing education, and in 2009 introduced a new requirement of 4 units of Sustainable Design. Yestermorrow is a Registered Continuing Education Systems Provider through the AIA and has been offering courses on the topic of sustainable design for nearly 30 years.

Yestermorrow Design/Build School offers over fifty 1-day, 2-day, 1-week, and 2-week courses that fulfill AIA Continuing Education requirements. AIA members are required to take 18 units of continuing education per year, including 8 units of Health, Safety, and Welfare. Many states also require additional learning units to maintain registration of one’s architecture license.

Some Yestermorrow courses that meet the AIA’s Sustainable Design requirements include Green Development Best Practices, Constructed Wetlands, and Real Time Building Energy Analysis. A full listing of Yestermorrow’s AIA credit courses is available at www.yestermorrow.org/aia-ces.htm. The AIA Board instituted the requirement for Sustainable Design credits in response to the issue of climate change and the impact of buildings on carbon emissions. The requirement became effective at the beginning of 2009 and extends through 2012.

Founded in 1980, the mission of Yestermorrow is to inspire people to create a better more sustainable world by providing hands-on education that integrates design and craft as a creative interactive process. Yestermorrow is committed to providing educational opportunities for practicing professionals and students in the fields of architecture, environmental design, fine arts, landscape design, engineering, and planning. The School’s goal is to expand the horizons of those already in the design and construction field, and to deepen their understanding of the interrelationships between the design process and the construction process.

Yestermorrow Announces Advisory Board

Five nationally and internationally recognized leaders in architecture, green building, energy and the environment have agreed to serve on Yestermorrow's newly announced Advisory Board.

Bill McDonough - is an internationally renowned designer and one of the primary proponents and shapers of what he and his partners call 'The Next Industrial Revolution.' Mr. McDonough is the founding principal of William McDonough + Partners, an internationally recognized design firm practicing ecologically, socially, and economically intelligent architecture and planning in the U.S. and abroad.

Bill McKibben - is an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic engineering. He is the author of The End of Nature, and Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He is a Scholar in Residence at Vermont's Middlebury College and is a leader in the movement to raise awareness about and combat climate change.

Dan Reicher - is the Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives for Google.org which works to advance policy in the areas of climate change and energy, global poverty, and global health. Dan has been a dedicated public servant, holding the post of Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) from 1997 - 2001, among many other positions with the DOE.

Dave Sellers - is a practicing architect in Warren, VT (Sellers and Co.), and was named as one of the 100 foremost architects in the world by Architectural Digest. Mr. Sellers' body of work includes 46 years of continuous experiments and designs from architecture to industrial design, from town planning to research and teaching. In addition to former teaching positions at Yale and MIT, Dave has been an influential instructor at Yestermorrow for nearly 20 years.

Sylvia Smith - is a Senior Partner at FXFOWLE Architects and directs the firm's Cultural/Educational Studio which has won numerous awards for design excellence. She believes that every project, regardless of type or size, can make an architectural move that empowers it and enlivens the experiences of people who visit or pass by. Her current work includes the redesign of the Lincoln Center public spaces and the expansion of the Juilliard School (with Diller Scofidio + Renfro), the Lion House reconstruction and the Jose E. Serrano Center for Global Conservation, both at the Bronx Zoo.

It's an honor for the School to have such a high caliber of supporters and advisors. You can read their full biographies on our website.

When I'm not on the clock...

I've been working on a mobile drafting kit that I can take back and forth with me to the studio and the chalet. It started as our shop orientation project and found a life of its own. I entered it into the "Outside of the Box" contest on FineWoodworking.com. Check it out if you'd like.

Tim's mobile drafting kit

My next personal project is a rolling tool cart that I can stack all of my individual tool boxes on. I think I'd like to incorporate some beefed up shoji screens as well as some green wood and maybe some turnings. Stay tuned.

Vote for Sprawl Free Vermont

Dear friends of Yestermorrow,

We're partnering with Dave Sellers on a proposal to create a statewide design competition to create fossil fuel free communities. Over the past few years Dave has taught a Yestermorrow course on Sustainable Communities of the Future, and this proposal is a natural outgrowth of that work.

Sprawl Free Vermont is a collaborative organization seeking to unite the rail towns of Vermont under a cohesive design forum to fortify and enrich the ecosystem of environmental and human community. All Vermont public schools, colleges and community groups will be invited to participate in an annual design competition to develop strategies for designing and implementing revised and new configurations for communities that will last for 500 years plus with minimum to zero requirement for fossil fuels to support civic societies that can change and evolve over time. Emphasis will be focused on adjusting and generating new technologies, but maintaining important traditions, artistic integrity and respect for natural and civil interactions between residents, businesses, craft and manufacturing.

The overall goal of Sprawl Free Vermont is to generate interest and awareness of the opportunities and creativity available world wide, regionally, and locally for long-term human settlement that does not invade, damage, limit, exhaust resources, or pollute the planet. Ultimately, Sprawl Free Vermont seeks to recognize creative and inclusive configurations that challenge and inspire future change, yet recognize important, unique aspects of the Vermont cultural and environmental landscape.

You can support this proposal with your vote-- the proposals which receive the most public support will be considered for a $200,000 grant from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.Just click here- it's easy:http://www.justmeans.com/competitionidea/10222/promoteidea.html

What's going on?

The Yestermorrow interns have been busy with various projects and classes around the campus lately, so I thought I'd post what we're all up to.

Will, Tressa and Stephanie spent time in Architectural Woodcarving this past week with Bill Schnute. Bill is a great guy and an amazing wood carver. It was incredible to see people's progress in only one week's instruction. Tressa's fish is a great example of what was accomplished. Zach and Kendall were participating in the NESEA Building Energy Conference in Boston, so I spent the majority of my week fixing broken tools. I'm into that type of thing, so it was fun.

This week, Kendall and Tressa are taking Beginning Furnituremaking, so Stephanie wrangled the remaining three of us and put us to work on gardening preparation: building straw bale cold frames, garden siting and compost area clearing. Now that the snow has left the garden patch, she has a better idea of what she is working with (and up against). Herb planting boxes are next on the list, and we've found some barky slabs that we're planning on using for them.

Tomorrow, we'll head up to Randy Taplin's shop to continue working on the router table we've been redesigning and building with him. Randy has been great in teaching us traditional cabinetry methods and skiing with us on his property. The views up there are out of hand, and our new router table will be almost too nice to use (or abuse) when it's finished.

I'm signed up for Efficiency by Design this weekend and am really looking forward to it. I'm fairly new to building efficiency and this class is purported to be a knowledge bomb that I hope will help Stephanie and me out when we're looking to build our own home one day. I would love it if we could have a home one day that met all of it's own needs and ours without negatively affecting other people and the environment.