If you've been to Yestermorrow, you've seen the "arches" - a relic of the former Alpen Inn which Yestermorrow purchased in 1990. Over the past 28 years, the 38 acre site has been modified and developed to support the needs of the school, with design studios, a woodshop, administrative offices, dormitory lodging, seasonal cabins, outdoor classroom space, kitchen, dining room, library, and an evolving array of unique features designed and built by students, instructors, interns and staff. The campus has evolved as a living and breathing example of the design/build process, demonstrating many of the different techniques and technologies taught in our classes.

We've always been creative in our use of space here at Yestermorrow and, as we've grown, that has often meant expanding our classrooms to the great outdoors. The open air arches have frequently served as an outdoor classroom, but without a roof our students and instructors have long been exposed to the (frequently fickle...) elements.

We're excited to move forward with our latest design/build project of transforming the arches into a permanent outdoor classroom. Josh Jackson and Skip Dewhirst have designed a beautiful timber frame. The timbers were harvested and milled by an incredible team led by Nick Zandstra, who is a sawyer by trade and teaches our Sustainable Forestry: Harvest and Mill your Own Lumber course. The rock star students in the January Timber Framing course started to cut the frame and the May Timber Framing Course will finish the task! There's still space in the May 2018 Timber Framing course if you'd like to join!

To round out the redesign on the space, the incredibly talented Thea Alvin, will lead the Art of Stone course in building a new stone wall and arch. We'd also like to invite interested students to join to Art of Stone Course (there are scholarships available!) 

Our dedicated team of Design Build interns have assisted in milling, demo, earthwork and prepping the concrete foundation. We are so appreciative of all the heads, hearts and hands that are making this project a reality.

Mark your calendars for May 12th when we'll have an open house party for everyone to come see the new project!

Many thanks to all the awesome people involved in this project including our Design/Build Interns Michael, Paige, Alicia, Cameron, Fiona and our Projects and Curriculum Manager Genevieve!