Yestermorrow/UMass Semester in Design/Build

Started in 2011, the Design/Build Semester is an ongoing partnership between Yestermorrow Design/Build School (Waitsfield, VT) and UMass Amherst’s Department of Architecture (Amherst, MA). Operating annually from mid-August to mid-December, the Semester Program takes up to 15 students from a variety of backgrounds through an architectural design process to the substantial completion of a year-round structure. Past projects have included back country cabins, tiny houses, and site built homes. Each year is a unique experience as it largely driven by the project. Students receive instruction in design, assembly and detailing, and building performance while exploring group process, definitions of sustainability, and relevant contexts in. This full-immersion, credit-bearing semester in building and design complements architecture, building science, engineering, and environmental design majors and has wide application in liberal arts curricula. Class formally meets on weekdays from 9am - 5pm. Students in this program have the option to earn 15 credits.

This program begins in the design studio for several weeks where students gain experience in group design and facilitation as well as project management. Students should be prepared to have their creative boundaries pushed as they learn essential drawing and drafting skills that will allow them to effectively communicate their design thinking. Following this design intensive, students translate theory into practice as they begin construction on an architecturally innovative shelter of their own design. Graduates of this program will know how to develop their own positions and arguments for good design, understand sound ethical and environmental building practices, how to use a variety of hand and power tools and feel comfortable on a building site.

The semester’s multidisciplinary curriculum is taught as an integrated whole: lectures, seminars, discussions, studio explorations, and job-site work are designed to reinforce and complement one another while informing the group design/build project. Students work together in a collaborative environment with the project as the focal point. The classroom is much like a professional studio or jobsite, except that the instructors-—as mentors—are there to facilitate the student’s creative vision.

Students are enrolled in 15 credits per semester, granted through University of Massachusetts Amherst’s department of Continuing and Professional Education. 

 Nowhere else can liberal arts students get this level of intensive, hands-on instruction for college credit from professional designers and builders who are leaders in the field.

The Yestermorrow-UMass Design/Build Semester offers admission to highly motivated students from a variety of academic and non-academic backgrounds including professionals, individuals seeking a career change, undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates from any major at any accredited degree-granting institution of higher education—no previous architecture or building experience is necessary. 

Yestermorrow Design/Build School has been in the forefront of the design/build movement since its inception in 1980, teaching architects, builders, and laypeople methods and tools to reduce ecological impacts by creating environmentally responsible architecture. Our Vermont campus is located in the Mad River Valley which is a locus for innovative architecture. The UMass Architecture + Design program is New England’s only public accredited architecture degree.

Category

Whole Structure Design/Build

Competency

All levels

Credits

  • UMass Amherst: 15

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