Rethinking Design

A guest post by Joel Glanzberg, Yestermorrow faculty member and master planning team member

The story of the oak beams of Oxford’s New College is helpful in rethinking design as a part of a larger process. Gregory Bateson tells how a maintenance man at the school found that the large beams that spanned the dinning hall were riddled with beetles. In the search for oak beams of that size the forester who managed the school's forestry endowment was called in. When told the problem he replied that he’d been waiting to be asked for the trees, as “everyone knows that in about five hundred years oak beams get beetlely.” It turned out that acorns had been planted when the school was built to supply the replacement beams. Bateson’s comment is “That’s the way to run a society.”

Learning from this example, we can see that the planning and development of a regenerative building begins with the development of the forests that supply the timber, the coppices that supply the withes and poles, the gathering of stones from crop fields, the tending of the sheep whose wool will insulate the walls and ceiling, and the development of the craftspeople who will tend the forest and flocks, fell the trees, tend the cleared fields, and craft the building. Seen in this much longer arc, if the design process is focused simply on the design of form, it misses most of the value-adding potential of the process of which “design/build” is a part. The full value-adding stream includes sourcing materials in regenerative ways and developing all five types of capital, including developing businesses and human and natural capacities and capabilities.

In realizing the full regenerative potential of a building, the process is the most fruitful portion. It is important to shift the focus from designing the form of the building to designing the form-giving process (which includes but is certainly not limited to planning and design). The building is a temporary manifestation of a much longer on-going process. What is to be gained by giving careful thought to the process rather than the form?

There is a well-known example from Australia where a farmer wanted to clear and fertilize a scrubby field and turn it into an orchard. Rather than hiring a bulldozer to clear the field and buying compost to fertilize it, he bought two piglets and some electric fencing. Concentrating their effects, a portion of the field was cleared and fertilized and was planted to orchard trees. The hogs were butchered. One supplied the pork for his family for a year, while the sale of the other provided money to buy two more piglets and corn to feed them for a year. After repeating this process for a number of years the entire field was cleared, fertilized, and planted to fruit trees while paying for itself and feeding the family. By establishing the orchard in stages, the fruit production began before the pork production ceased. In fact, pigs could easily have continued to feed in the orchard, eating fallen fruit and cultivating the soil. The food production process did not begin with the completion of the orchard, but began with the commencement of the process for establishing it. In fact, it was a food production process all along that shifted form from pork to fruit. The form is unimportant. How do we design “design/build” processes that are similarly productive from the outset or from which buildings are a byproduct?

There are many systems that encourage the creation of drawings of the design of buildings as a focus, from permitting to financing. It is usually the assumed design decisions - which are in fact unmade because they are assumed - that could yield the greatest benefit if thought about, questioned, and addressed creatively. If we assume how the building process occurs, we miss many opportunities for regeneration. It is just like assuming that transportation means cars - or if  I'm really thinking radically, electric cars or even buses. This limited thinking misses many opportunities. The greatest limit to yield (potential) is our minds. Certainly this limit is mostly in our assumptions and preconceptions. How do we shift our focus from designing objects to designing processes that are regenerative? How do we stop thinking about any activity as separate from the ongoing life (self-regeneration) of places?

Yestermorrow Collaboration Opportunity

We’re looking for community clients for our basic carpentry classes! Students build small structures (up to 150 ft²) in our Basic Carpentry, Carpentry for Women, and Home Design/Build courses—previous projects have included garden sheds, playhouses, woodsheds, chicken coops, and small cabins. (Images of previous projects are included throughout this post.) Projects are typically built at Yestermorrow’s Waitsfield campus and delivered after the class, though we sometimes build on-site for clients within the Mad River Valley.

 

We have several pre-designed sheds on file, and for an additional fee our instructors can create custom designs. Yestermorrow is not equipped to carry on a project after the completion of the class, which occasionally leaves some minor work for clients to finish—but our students' work will be done well, and always done under professional supervision. Generally speaking, involving a Yestermorrow class in your project provides a premium product at below-market prices, as we do not charge for labor. Clients pay for materials plus 20% overhead, plus any design and transportation costs. Overall costs typically run $1500-$2000, though costs vary significantly according to the size of the structure, the intricacy of the design, the materials chosen, and other factors.

For more information, contact Abby Martin at (802) 496-5545 or outreach@yestermorrow.org

Connecting to the Designer Within: An Architect’s Immersion into Woodworking

by Anna Lucey, Woodworking Certificate student

Upon waking my first thought is: maybe I can use the planer to taper that wide board! The strangeness of waking with this thought is compounded by the fact that 11 weeks ago I didn’t even know what a planer was. The reality is this: the Yestermorrow Woodworking Certificate Program is a full-immersion course where you eat, breathe, and sleep the art and science of woodworking. As such, there comes a point where your subconscious takes over the sometimes daunting (but, in woodworking, ever-present) task of problem solving.

At work on a small-scale design/build project.

I came to Yestermorrow with a bachelors degree in architecture and four years of entry-level architecture work (a.k.a. “CAD monkeying”) behind me. The Woodworking Certificate Program caught my eye at a time when I felt disconnected from the designer within. I had spent so much time behind a computer screen fine tuning construction documents that I began losing perspective on what it was I actually enjoyed about architecture: problem solving and making things that were simultaneously useful and beautiful. Certainly woodworking, I told myself, must combine aspects of those things. 

And believe me, as someone who dreamt I was a log after our Stump to Sticker section, it does. 

But it goes so beyond that. I’ve been completely blown away by what I’ve learned versus what I expected this course to be like. What I’ve come to realize as our 11-week program comes to an end is that woodworking is special because:

1. You get to work with wood and, by extension, forests, trees, lumber mills, micro- (and macro) loggers, lumber yards, and in wood shops with other woodworkers.  
2. You get to design and build! This process is truly precious to designers because of the conversation between materials and concept. I’ve been blown away at how “design opportunities” (read: “Oh sh*t I just cut this board too short!”), while initially frustrating, can lead to such a rich and sometimes unexpected end product. It’s truly exciting.  
3. A direct cousin of 2, you get to use your hands all day long. The peacefulness of using a chisel or a hand plane is pretty much unparalleled. Even though you may casually drink 5 cups of coffee throughout the day, you’ll still fall into bed exhausted at the end of it.  
4. It may have been Rem Koolhaas who said something along the lines of: “Architecture happens in elephant time while all those outside of architecture expect it to happen in rabbit time.” Yeah, yeah, Rem. We get it. But the beauty of woodworking is that is can and often does happen in rabbit time. This does wonders for the psychological well-being of those involved (read: It won’t take you three years to produce something that is so watered down by value engineering that it barely resembles the original beauty of the object you designed).  
5. You get to smell the difference between walnut and butternut when ripped on the table saw, and in that moment you’ll realize: I love this. 

Hand carving on a shave horse

As with all 20-somethings, I was certain I would know exactly how this adventure in Vermont would go: I would work with my hands, learn a thing or two about wood, and head right back into an architecture office armed with this special new knowledge. But here I am at the end of a truly life-changing 11 weeks. And in this moment, I now realize that it is not the practice of woodworking that will make me a better architect. It is my practice of architecture that will make me a better woodworker. 

And by the way, the planer trick worked great.

Permaculture: unpacking design with ecology

The cornerstone of my Design/Build internship with Yestermorrow is choosing six weeks of courses from a rich and eclectic catalog, everything from building yurts to designing forest gardens. It was a real struggle for me to choose; I would literally take every offering—but I can’t.


Looking at the available courses, I eventually concluded that my “goal” was to become a better designer. Admittedly I didn’t know exactly what this meant. Drafting? Sketching? Organizing and utilizing space for efficiency? Aesthetics? Comfort? Admittedly I still don’t have a clear idea, but I’d guess that most designers spend a lifetime figuring it out.

Luckily I’ve fallen in love with the process of “figuring it out.” So far I’ve manipulated space and ideas, in diverse shades, intensities, and materials—from houses to paper to landscapes. I’ve found that it all comes back to choice—asking what to think about and how to think about it, playfully, with flexibility and confidence. A house can look like almost anything—a box, a passive solar rectangle, or, in Paul Hanke’s case, a dragon. Seeing there is no shortage of options, the heart of design lies in the process, because at the end of the day we have to make a choice—and then create something. Maybe design is exactly that: a process for distilling and focusing a world of possibilities into a single point, so that we can sit in a chair, have a roof over our heads, and interact with the world (and stop designing!). 


The Permaculture Design Certification Course is providing me with an especially cogent ecological lens for informing this process.  Simply put, we humans are merely features within a much broader environmental dance—with water, changes in terrain, soil, wildlife, celestial mechanics, and the many other feature of our ecology.  Anything that we build will be subject to this context—a chair lives within a particular house, on a particular street, in a particular bioregion, not in a vacuum. Permaculture encourages us to deeply and carefully observe our environment so that we can design from it rather than against it. I’m already discovering that ecology can inform and direct design, rather than the other way around. 


Speaking of which, I need to get back to designing maps, landscapes, and trees of colored pencil. I’ll design another blog entry soon.

March Madness, Yestermorrow-Style

Here at Yestermorrow, we've been following the Big Dance in our own way, with a March Madness ping-pong tournament! Staff, interns, and Woodworking Certificate students entered the tournament, playing games at lunchtime and whenever the main studio was free. It's a double-elimination bracket, so everybody gets at least two games—winners advance in the main bracket, while people who lose in the main bracket have a second chance in the lower bracket.

Ben Cheney, Woodworking Certificate instructor, plays Dave Warren, Facilities Manager.

In keeping with the Yestermorrow theme of stacking functions, our ping-pong table doubles as the architectural model-making table in the main studio. It's a little shorter than a standard ping-pong table, and the ball gets lost amidst shelves of books and model-making supplies—there's a built-in breather in some games as players search the bookshelves after an errant serve.

Dave and Ben go hunting for the ping-pong ball.

We're down to the final game of the main bracket, slated for sometime this week. Design/Build Intern (and fierce kickball competitor) Chris will be up against Woodworking Certificate student (and champion derby girl) Heather; the winner of that match will play the winner of the lower bracket to determine the 2012 Yestermorrow Ping-Pong Champion. The prize? The Golden Paddle Award, designed and built by Woodshop Intern Patrick.

Yestermorrow at NESEA

Last week, several interns and Executive Director Kate Stephenson represented Yestermorrow at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association's annual conference in Boston. Among the high-performance building and renewable energy presentations and workshops were two presentations co-led by Kate, and several others led by Yestermorrow instructors and friends.

On Wednesday, Kate and instructor Bill Reed presented "Whole Systems in Practice, in Place: Where Do You Fit In?" Focusing on Yestermorrow's ongoing master planning process, they discussed integrating design processes, and the importance of shifting attention from technical to living systems and from the project to the place and the living systems that sustain it.

On Thursday, Kate and instructors Ace McArleton and Jacob Deva Racusin presented "Energy Performance of Natural Building," examining the building science behind modern straw bale, timber frame, and plaster construction. Using case studies of single-family residences in the Northeast, they presented the findings of thermodynamic and hydrodynamic research, and how natural building techniques fit into a high-performance building portfolio.

We also set up a booth in the trade show, where we talked with a steady stream of builders, architects, energy scientists and developers--including former and upcoming students who stopped by to say hello. Yestermorrow was one of only two schools represented on the trade show floor, and our shave horse and various wooden furniture definitely stood out in an exhibit hall predominantly filled with renewable energy systems and building component manufacturers. But the biggest conversation-starter of all was our willow-ribbed canoe, which helped demonstrate Yestermorrow's focus on experiential learning (and even generated some raffle ticket sales!).

Katrin Klingenberg and the Passive House Tour at the Yestermorrow booth.

One of the biggest themes of the conference was the popularity of the Passive House, both in presentations and on the trade show floor. We were thrilled to see several students from January's Passive House Consultant Training staffing the (very busy) Passive House New England booth next to ours. And Yestermorrow got in on the Passive House excitement when instructor Katrin Klinenberg brought a crowd to our booth as the conclusion of her tour of Passive-House related exhibitors.

Between the four of us who attended NESEA, we must have had several hundred conversations about the Yestermorrow experience, various courses offered, and the school's integrated design/build approach to a problem-solving for a future with limited resources. Even more than these casual conversations, however, the Yestermorrow-affiliated presentations generated excitement about the school's mission and teaching work. May that excitement continue!

All About Presentation

Pecha Kucha, (pronounced "pe-chahk-cha") is the Japanese word for "chit-chat." It's a style of presentation in which the presenters get 20 slides to show and 20 seconds to talk about each slide. 

With only 6 minutes and 40 seconds to get your idea across, the format keeps the presentation short, concise, and visually interesting. 

Above is a video of the third in the series of Pecha Kucha Nights held in Montpelier, Vermont sponsored by Yestermorrow Design/Build School and Transition Town Montpelier. This Pecha Kucha centered on the theme of "A World Without Oil."

Recently the staff and interns at Yestermorrow had our own Pecha Kucha, where we each presented on a topic of our own choosing. It made for an entertaining and informative time. I highly recommend Pecha Kucha as a template for any orientation-style activity, as it is a great way for members of a group to get to know one another.

Come On People Now...

In exchange for our time, skill and efforts, we interns can request to have a place in classes that relate to our personal pursuits. For three weeks starting in late January, I was in the core class for the Certificate in Sustainable Building and Design. This course pans out to be three separate, intense one-week classes that take the students through studies of Permaculture, Community Design, and Individual Building Design. “Intense”being the operative word. For each of the first two weeks, we found ourselves working in groups of four to complete a large culminating assignment that would be presented on Friday.

On top of learning the curriculum, we were challenged to form, storm, norm, and perform: a sweetly packaged way to illustrate the social dynamics that happen when strangers are asked to huddle up and accomplish a task together. We come from all sorts of backgrounds and stages in life, so it was no surprise that we had some storming happen every now and then. But, no matter what trials happened during the week, on Friday the presentations were well laid out, artfully delivered, and downright impressive.

I’m beginning to think that collaboration could be the beating heart of social change and one of the strengths woven into Yestermorrow’s teaching style. The more we get together, the more we gather our skills; the more we understand each other, the more common ground we find. We will be creating a culture of respect for each others' talents and knowledge, compassion for each others' struggles, and possibly the willingness to collaborate more often. A neat looped system that regenerates itself while enriching all entities involved. This is far from a prescription for world peace, by any means. But I think it’s a step in a positive direction.

Thinking globally, acting locally—this mindset has changed my daily interactions on a perception and attitude level. Instead of coming back to my intern duties with my head down ready to barrel into a solo project, I’ve kept an openness to some collective goals. By the close of my second day back on the job, I was able to work with my fellow interns on two somewhat daunting tasks of planning new space for the intern workbench with David and helping Jess organize the library. In reconnecting with them after three weeks of being in class,  I recognized that we were learning from each others' rhythms of work.

Challenging. Fulfilling. Motivating.

Small Spaces, Big Ideas...

Introducing The Tiny House! Built by former Yestermorrow student and wood shop intern Gillian Davis.

Gillian designed her tiny house at Yestermorrow's Home Design class and, over the course of 2011, built the structure using a variety of recycled and surplus materials. An experiment in creating an affordable yet comfortable space without being tied to a specific location, the tiny house is truly a home that can go anywhere.

Come check out Gillian's house in person or sign up for the Home Design Class or the Tiny House Design/Build Class to design and build your very own tiny house!

Semester Program Tiny House on inhabitat

We're delighted to see the fall 2011 Semester Program tiny house featured on inhabitat! Read the whole feature here.

Exciting Design Opportunity for all Designers!

This invitation just in from our Master Planning Core Team…
The Master Planning Core Team has authorized the formation of a Design Field Team. This volunteer group is needed to explore, articulate and demystify "design" as it is found at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School. The primary focus will be architecture and "built form" but all other areas of design and design theory may be entertained.

Projects and other design topics addressed will be selected from those brought by others or independently taken up by the Design Team from within. Findings will be updated continually on the Yestermorrow web site and also published through venues outside the school.

WHY a DESIGN TEAM?

From its inception, the Yestermorrow School has been a different sort of design school - it is a design/build school. Smaller and more nimble, it can respond more quickly to developments and emerging trends in the design world. But in order to remain meaningful, the design curricula and the resulting buildings must be understandable to everyone connected with the school. This means students, faculty, staff, and even the occasional visitor should have access to an explanation of the design thinking behind the school's appearance.

There is currently a healthy spectrum of design being practiced at Yestermorrow, with different goals and priorities. To encourage synergies and allow them to coexist elegantly, they must be understandable. These are the two critical services the Design Team will bring to the school:

1. Design Conversation

2. Critical Dialogue

The Design Field Team's project specific reviews, or white papers, will address the following:

· Form and Aesthetics - Content

· Form and Aesthetics - Coherence

· Design Intention - Design and Process Principles (master plan)

· Program - definition and degree of success

· Feasibility and craft (buildability)

· Resource Efficiency

· Context - physical

· Context - cultural & historical

· Compliance - codes and other self-imposed rules

· Conclusions - Strengths

· Conclusions - Limitations

Considerations may be added or eliminated at the will of the team.

If you're interested...

The Design Field Team (aka: The Design Amigos) will meet regularly to discuss planned school projects and other design topics. The Team will not have authority to block or promote any project, rather it intends to become a respected voice in the broadest conversation possible about design.

Conventional and online meetings will take place no less than once a month to support ongoing discourse around various design initiatives. In the spirit of inclusion, a wiki will be created to give larger numbers access to the design conversations (i.e. Foswiki , Twiki, etc).

· Any and all members of the Yestermorrow community interested in working on the Design Field Team are urged to submit a written application.

· Due to the importance of written communication in this undertaking, there will be no personal interviews.

Selection will be blind and based entirely on the written applications. Download the application and send it via email to outreach@yestermorrow.org.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, but please send in your responses ASAP so that we can get this team rolling!

Skillsharing at Yestermorrow

"So, what do you guys do at night?"

Well, some nights we share. Skills that is.

Interns are organizing a weekly Skillshare, to keep our minds, bodies and hands learning, even after hours. It gives us a chance to share something we care about with each other, and connect with students and staff members over more than beer and drywall screws.

This week, our woodshop intern, Patrick Black, shared his Shaolin Kung Fu practice with an eager group of students and interns. We cleared out the main studio and practiced our horse stance, eagle claws, and snap kicks. Turns out, Kung Fu roughly translates to "hard work," and it certainly was! We worked up a sweat, followed with a beer and some clips from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Stay tuned for Kate's sweater crafting next week. It's sure to be a wild and cute-packed evening.

Moving from Woodlot to Woodshop

As the 2012 Woodworking Certificate Program enters its third week, students are honing in from forests to fine woodworking. The 11-week intensive course began with sawyer Nick Zandstra, who took students out into the woods on Yestermorrow's campus to analyze trees and the wood they produce, and eventually demonstrate felling and small-scale milling practices.

The class prepares to haul freshly-cut yellow birch logs back to the center of campus.

And those same yellow birch logs, after a pass through Nick's Wood Mizer mill.

From here, students move into the woodshop to learn the tactile essence of this green wood by shaping it into ladderback chairs.

Green wood being shaped into the leg of a ladderback chair.

And from there, they'll move on to cabinetry and boxmaking and other fine woodworking sections of the Woodworking Certificate--always sensing the journey their materials have made from forest to furniture. This deeply interdisciplinary learning environment, where students learn to connect broad forest ecology with detailed boxmaking, constitutes Yestermorrow's core.

Master Planning Update

We have been forging ahead with our master planning process over the past few months, and I want to give a quick update on where we are and where we’re headed.

First, we want to thank everyone who sent feedback in November in response to the design we presented at the faculty meeting and board meeting. The Core Team (made up of Kinny Perot, Robin Morris, John Connell, Gillian Davis, Kathy Meyer and myself) has met almost weekly since then to address some of the questions that were raised, to gather more data, and to meet with the Waitsfield Design Review Board. Getting their initial feedback helped us to understand the permit process and where we needed to focus our efforts going forward.

We certainly haven’t answered all the questions – this is an ongoing and iterative process – but we’ve made a lot of progress. Our goal right now is to get a zoning permit application together to submit to the town in April. To do that, we’ve hired experts to support us in additional surveying, CAD work, and storm water system design. Then next up will be additional design and permitting for wastewater and Act 250. While we certainly don’t want the whole process to be permit driven, we do know that we need to have these permits in place in order for us to start construction on any campus projects, and we are hoping to complete a small greenhouse project this summer. Additional planning and design work will continue through the spring, summer and fall as we get into a higher level of detail on many of the different aspects of the campus design.
In terms of phasing and priority, the first projects on our list are semester program classrooms and lodging, so that we can bring these new programs onto our campus. Also at the top of the list is replacing our intern housing. We’re hoping that many of these projects can be designed and built by students.

The focus of our work in 2012 will be to continue to iterate and develop our campus design, and lay the groundwork through permitting and strategic planning to start to raise funds to realize our long term vision for Yestermorrow.

For more information about our master plan and process, I encourage you to check out the blog we’ve created specifically for sharing notes and documents at http://ymmasterplanning.blogspot.com, specifically created to keep the entire process transparent and inclusive. John Connell and I hosted a webinar on February 22nd to share the plans and answer questions from the Yestermorrow community. You can watch a recording of the presentation and Q&A online (it's just over an hour long).

As always, if you have questions about our master planning process and how we’re moving forward, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Kate Stephenson, Executive Director

Core 77 Features Yestermorrow

We were psyched to see a great post on the Core77 blog last week about Yestermorrow and our alternative approach to design education.

Check it out at http://www.core77.com/blog/education/alternative_design_education_the_yestermorrow_designbuild_school_21644.asp