Kicking Off Tiny House Design-Build 2016

Last night we kicked off the seventh round of Yestermorrow's two-week Tiny House Design-Build class. This is my fifth time teaching the course with Paul Hanke (who started the class) and Patti Garbeck and Lizabeth Moniz who introduced me to Yestermorrow in the first place via stories about the homes they built for themselves in the book The House That Jill Built.

This time we're joined by fourteen students from as nearby as Putney, VT and as far away as Melbourne, Australia! Our students come to us with a variety of motivations for creating a tiny home. Many of them are interested in building their own homes. Several of them are interested in being more self-sufficient. A few want to use tiny homes as a teaching tool. And a couple think they may want to make a business of building tiny homes. 

Last night, after our introductions, we did a warm up activity that involves creating models inspired by a found object from Paul's treasure box under a short timeframe. It's was such fun to see what they invented in the brief time allotted to them last night and I can't wait to see what they come up with over the course of the next two weeks as they explore these tiny house dreams and schemes!