Presentation Day at Yestermorrow is always a bit like Xmas morning for me. Dave and I posted our list on Wednesday evening, asking our students to incorporate context/site, floor plans, elevations, and sections and/or models into their Friday presentations. And we were up late with them on Thursday night. So it’s a little like sending a letter to Santa and then trying to stay up to catch him. (Several of our Less Is More students were still up at the eleventh hour when I called it a night!) But inevitably, some of the design magic happens after we’re fast asleep, visions of elegant details dancing in our heads. We never know exactly what we’ll find on the presentation board when the designs are pinned up of the following day, so it’s a wonderful surprise!
This morning our presentations began at nine and everyone presented his or her work and then receive feedback from their classmates and our reviewers. Paul Hanke and Kathy Meyer are both architects and seasoned Yestermorrow instructors, so they brought a fresh set of eyes and great insights.
It was a delight to see the designs our students developed over the course of the week, including:
- Bert’s mobile house and studio
- Carol’s historic barn to cottage conversion
- Dani’s southern farmstead with indoor-outdoor rooms
- Emily’s complex of yurt dwellings
- Eric’s tiny house on a trailer with a unique roofline
- Genevieve’s little house on the go
- Jason’s timber-framed cabin
- Luke & Katie’s renovation to create a cozy community
- Matt’s caboose-inspired home, art studio, and apothecary
- Max’s sailboat-inspired off-grid tiny home
- Rick’s vardo as showman’s wagon
What an honor it is to teach at Yestermorrow and enjoy the company and creativity of such inspiring students!
I’m looking forward to my next week-long small home design course, which I’ll be co-teaching with John Labovitz in Portland, OR in November. Contact me if you’d like to be added to the notification list for more information!
