One of our Semester in Design/Build students, Philip Kiefer, sat down with us to candidly reflect upon his semester experience at Yestermorrow during his final week on campus. 

What is your background in building?

I moved to Vermont about a year and a half ago and had been working in journalism. I decided to take a break from that and so I went and worked for a trail crew last fall, and ended up helping out on this barn restoration at the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps headquarters in Richmond. When I finished with that I worked for a guy with a little renovation business in Burlington doing projects like a full room addition on a house down to patching drywall and doing some basic plumbing, so touching a lot of a lot of little tiny pieces of Renovations.

Why’d you sign up for the Semester in Design/Build at Yestermorrow?

I liked building but was curious about the design side of things, and curious about going to architecture school potentially—but that's a huge commitment for something that I hadn't really actually gotten my hands dirty with before. I don't think there are a whole lot of other things like this program, where you get to spend this much time and get so involved in an architectural project as someone with no experience and no serious long-term commitment to it. 

What has been unexpected about the semester?

The pace. I don't think I really had a sense of how big a challenge building a house is—which now seems like such a naive thing to say. Even just designing a house! The amount that I produced in terms of drawings and design exercises is kind of staggering. It's been really cool to look back on and think, “I can't believe that we did all that in seven weeks.”

Why does project based learning work effectively for you?

It’s wild to think of architecture as somehow abstractable from the actual process of building a house or whatever kind of building. It's wild to me that people can go to school for five years and never actually have to construct one of the things that they designed.

You have to learn through making mistakes and by putting your hands on things, like figuring out how to hold a pencil, how to arrange your workspace to make drafting possible, or like how to swing a hammer and how to use pry tools to get things lined up properly. It's just hard to imagine how you would learn anything in building without doing it.

What is the most important skill or lesson you’ve learned here?

Two things standout: on the design side of things I have a much clearer sense of what in a design might make things really challenging to build later on down the road. How much of a gap there is between drawing something in the abstract and then actually trying to put it together. On the building side of things, I’ve really learned some lessons about the importance of slowing down and staying organized, and taking the time to do the tedious things like site organization work. What makes really good carpenters good is that they recognize the value of the tedious work. Constantly pushing forward without paying attention to the small details will eventually bite you in the ass.

What has been your favorite experience this semester?

I loved the 10 days where we were producing construction documents. We had a pretty flushed-out concept for the building at that point and then we were split up into teams to figure out all of the outstanding final pieces of the puzzle. All of us were working on separate problems nominally: a team thinking about framing, one doing windows and doors, one doing sort of big-picture questions of what the trusses would look like, another looking at some floor plan stuff, and I was working on wall assembly details. All of those problems were interrelated so we would all be drawing and then coming over to each other and asking “How does this affect what you're doing?” and, “Can I see your drawing and compare notes?” It felt like we were all one giant hive mind. 

What has been most challenging for you this semester?

I think it comes back to pacing ourselves. There were times when we pushed and pushed really hard to get the project where we wanted it, only to find ourselves in a place where we needed to go back and correct mistakes. You learn a lot by making those mistakes and they'll probably not be mistakes I make again. It’s really frustrating to realize that something we put up three weeks ago has to be taken down, because we were moving too fast and missing the small details.

What is campus life like?

It's awesome. I go to the river every day. I really like how non hierarchical the campus feels–it’s really easy to just feel like one of the gang on campus, and it seems like everyone's in it together. 

But getting to spend this semester with this group of people is definitely the highlight. I’m really going to miss this class and the creative energy that everyone brings. 

How do you spend your time off?

We play a lot of cards and we do a lot of reading—just poking through all the books that are in the Yestermorrow library. 

What’s your favorite spot on campus?

The bench on the Beaver Pond and the Punch Bowl. [A swimming hole that is two minutes walking distance from campus.]

What’s next for you?

I'm applying to architecture grad school programs. I liked this experience enough that I want to keep doing it. That won't start until next fall, so in the meantime I’m hoping to work as a builder. I think the challenges that we've had with the building process have made me feel like I really want to develop my skill set a little bit more. I want to do that in design too, but this feels like a really good moment to try and get work with builders who would teach me more.