Join us for an inspiring journey into tiny house design!
In this online design workshop, you’ll learn the entire process—from brainstorming ideas and exploring design alternatives to drawing scaled plans and estimating materials and costs. We’ll also briefly introduce the use of drafting software. Using two simple A-frame structures planned for Earthdance as our case study, we’ll guide you through designing cozy, functional spaces that will serve as private bedrooms for guests and workshop facilitators. By the end, you’ll have the confidence and skills to create your own simple dwelling designs.
This design workshop is in preparation for an event this spring where we will actualize our co-created designs for two A-frame tiny houses. On the weekend of May 8th – 11th, there will be the opportunity to participate in a unique, immersive 3-day experience where we’ll build the A-frame tiny houses together at Earthdance. This hands-on construction workshop will blend practical skill-building with community, movement, and music—stay tuned for further details!
What do participants need to have or bring?
Please bring paper and pencil to sketch out your ideas. Ideally you would also have graph paper and a scale ruler (or regular ruler) if those are available to you, but it’s not necessary for the workshop.
WHEN
Thursday, March 20th from 6-8pm
Thursday, March 27th from 6-8pm
PRICING
This is a donation based offering. We suggest a sliding scale of $15 to $150 per class.
Please give to your hearts content! This will help pay for the building of a new tiny home on Earthdance land to use during our events.
Once you register, we will send you the Zoom link to join.
HOST BIOS
Brenden McBrier
Brenden McBrier grew up in Denver, Colorado and always dreamed of building his own home and living surrounded by nature. In his younger years, he spent an ample amount of time outdoors having connection with the Earth in his mother’s garden. He started his building career learning about different natural building techniques after high school. Attending the Earthship Biotecture Academy in Uruguay, South America was a catalyst towards that dream. Permaculture became his main focus years later as a lifestyle and career choice: uplifting and putting energy toward a life of growing food in symbiosis with the surrounding ecosystem. Combining the two passions with building livable greenhouses brought Regenerative Retrofits LLC to life in 2020. Now based in South Burlington, the green dream continues forward for him, sharing innovative ways and building with nature.
Scotty Guzman
Scotty is a natural builder, compost educator, inventor, and farmer with a degree in chemical engineering from W.P.I. and 10 years of experience in the world of cooperative business. He is the founder of Diggers Cooperative, a local Maine compost and permaculture design business, and a co-founder of Permatours, a permaculture education non-profit organization. Through collaboration with Permatours and several other highly skilled educators, Scotty is helping build an online education platform to share educational content on various topics such as building science 101 and Hempcrete. With a current focus on yurt construction professionally, Scotty is bringing his yurt energy to this A-frame design/build workshop by being a voice for simplicity, strength and function.
Riana Kernan
Riana is an engineer, visionary, and passionate permaculture practitioner dedicated to co-creating a more harmonious world. She devotes some of her time to stream restoration projects as a water resources engineer and also serves as an educator, organizer, and council member with Permatours. With a deep love for building regenerative communities, she often is inspired to sketch out visions for tiny houses and ecovillages. She resides part-time in the tiny house she designed and built with friends and spends the rest of her time traveling in her self-converted van. Riana holds a Permaculture Design Certificate from Starhawk and Charles Williams at OUR Ecovillage (2019) and earned a Master’s degree in Environmental and Water Quality Engineering from MIT (2013).