Tech Farmhouse - Click to see SlideshowTerra Firma Inc is the collective architectural design and construction work of Alisa Dworsky and Danny Sagan. Co-founded in 1992 we have been specializing in climatically specific, energy and resource efficient small buildings  . Contact: dsagan@sover.net,alisadworsky.com

Danny SaganAssistant Professor. B.A. Yale. 1986; M.Arch, Yale, 1992; Co-founder of the design firm Terra Firma, Inc.; Co-author Vermont Builds Greener Standards; Danny teaches design, active building systems, design/build studio, and global issues in architecture.

dsagan@norwich.edu

click to enlarge (more images in Slideshows)We began this semester by designing a eight foot long beam out of one piece of lumber that was strong enough to support Professor Danny Sagan. After students created models of their individual designs, they were divided into several groups dependent upon similarities within their designs. Each group consolidated their designs into a single solution, and build a full-scale model to be tested for structural integrity and integrated beauty.

A History of Vermont's Design/Build Movement 1964-1977

September 24 - December 19, 2008
Fleming Museum, East Gallery

Architectural Improvisation: A History of Vermont's Design/Build Movement 1964-1977 documents a radical, Vermont-based architectural movement characterized by organic forms, improvisational processes, hands-on methods, and natural materials. Predating the back-to-the-land movement but motivated by similar values and principles, the Design/Build movement focused on a new mediatory role for architecture both in creating community and in the then-newly charged relationship between humans and the environment. A number of the documented projects from the mid-1960s pioneered technological and social experimentation such as solar heating, wind power, and co-housing.

Guest-curated by Norwich University architecture professor Danny Sagan, the exhibition traces the development of the Design/Build movement from its roots in Bauhaus theory at Yale School of Architecture in the early 1960s to its radical social, technological, and aesthetic experimentation. It examines the work of a group of young architects who moved to Vermont from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania Architecture program in the mid-1960s, among them, David Sellers, Bill Reineke, Jim Sanford, Bill Maclay, Ellen Strauss, Charles Hosford, John Mallary, and Barry Simpson. The exhibition documents for the first time the exemplary Vermont projects created by these architects, including Sibley/Pyramid House, Tack House, and Dimetrodon on "Prickly Mountain" in Warren, Vermont; Goddard College in Plainfield; and the Anthos housing project in Waitsfield; as well as Skidompha House in Maine. It presents previously unpublished photographs and drawings, contemporary photographs, artifacts from the houses, and other documentary materials that reflect both the process and the resulting structures. An accompanying catalogue will be published by the University of Vermont Press. (read more)