A Vermont school offers hands-on building classes, including for the construction of a ‘tiny home.’
Tucked in the fairyland of Waitsfield, Vt., Yestermorrow Design/Build School has a mission committed to creating a more sustainable future. The school offers a range of classes, from “Build Skin-On-Frame Canoe” to “Permaculture For Regional Planning.”
A hallmark course is a semester-long program where students design and construct a tiny home for a client. No experience is required. Students are taught basic architectural drawing skills to the rudiments of swinging a hammer on a construction site.
Yestermorrow Design/Build School
Yestermorrow seeks students who are self-motivated and desire to “put their hands to work making their world.”
The school’s mission has not changed since its founding in 1980: Inspire people to create a better, more sustainable world by providing hands-on education that integrates design and craft as a creative, interactive process.
All students are provided with room and board. The school attracts everyone from the college-age to retirees looking to learn a new skill.
Course offerings have expanded since Yestermorrow began. Students can spend two days or a whole semester on campus. Two-day offerings include “Powertools for Women” and “Designing Furniture,” each costing $400.
Build A Tiny Home
Yestermorrow’s tiny home course is an intensive 12-day flurry of classwork and building.
In less than two weeks, students learn design principles and apply them to a tiny home construction project. This is accomplished through morning and afternoon framing and sheathing sessions, followed by evening design and planning exercises in a studio.
The final product is a tiny home of students’ imaginations: on wheels, solid foundation, timber, brick, or many other forms. The 12-day course costs $2,000.
Full Courses In ‘Sustainable’ Design
Beyond tiny homes, the school runs 30-day certificate programs. These comprise a series of workshops culminating in a certificate in a broader area, like woodworking or residential design and construction.
The semester program partners with the University of Massachusetts to provide college credit. It costs around $20,000, including room and board.
Semester programs teach the basics of the design process. These include what sustainability means in the architecture world and how to work as a team on a semester-long project.
Clients are pre-selected. As one example, this past autumn a class worked on a 550-square-foot guest home for a client in Warren, Vt.
Semesters end with long days on the job site, where students put their plans into action. Although they don’t always complete a project by the end of a semester, they learn skills to complete a large-scale building project from start to finish.
Yestermorrow is an option for outdoors-loving folk hoping to refine their self-sufficiency skills. See the course catalog, and get information about the campus here to plan your education at this unique school.
