Filmmaker Allie Rood has spent nine years documenting an extraordinary architectural movement that transformed Vermont's Mad River Valley into a nationally recognized hub of innovative design. Her new feature-length documentary, "Prickly Mountain and My Design Build Life," chronicles the revolutionary design-build movement that began in the 1960s when a group of young architects started creating unconventional homes on Prickly Mountain in Warren.
Rood's personal connection to this architectural revolution runs deep. She grew up in houses designed and built by her parents, including one constructed on an old lumber mill site with a working water turbine and another perched on a hillside that evolved to include a tower topped by an onion-shaped cupola. Their current residence, the Waitsfield 10, was built over 16 summers by design-build students at the Yestermorrow School in Waitsfield, who contributed individual design elements ranging from concrete faces to trapezoidal drawers.
The documentary, which made its debut at the Architecture and Design Film Festival and toured cities including New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Mumbai, will be screened at the Big Picture Theater in Waitsfield from Friday through Monday, November 21-24. The film explores how the design-build movement upended traditional architectural norms by having designers also serve as builders, allowing structures to evolve organically during construction rather than following rigid predetermined plans.
Through interviews with key figures in the movement, Rood brings together voices spanning generations. She features Bob Engman, the last of the Bauhaus designers who taught sculpture at Yale Architecture School in the early 1960s, alongside young people creating innovative homes today. The film includes conversations with several Yale-educated architects who launched the Prickly Mountain experiment, including the late David Sellers, Bill Reineke, Danny Sagan, and Charlie Hosford.
The documentary takes viewers inside iconic buildings across the decades, starting with the groundbreaking 1960s Tack House and Sibley House, both of which drew national attention when they were first built. Artist Candy Barr, who has lived in the Tack House since 1976, demonstrates its unique angles, curves, and ingenious features, including a hinged party wall that opens to the outside for expanded gathering space. Charlie Hosford, revisiting the pyramidal Sibley House for the first time in 50 years, explains the collage-like construction process that yielded its compelling sculptural quality.
The movement expanded as more architects and innovation enthusiasts joined the Prickly Mountain community. Bill Maclay, Jim Sanford, and Richard "Trav" Travers launched the ambitious multi-family, multi-level Dimetrodon project, where individuals shaped their own living spaces within an overall collaborative structure. This dinosaur-like building became a playground for children like young Allie Rood, who experienced its exciting and unexpected spaces firsthand.
Environmental consciousness and sustainability concerns brought fresh ideas to the community. At the Bobbin Mill, a former factory near Warren village, Barrie Simpson established what became a green energy incubator, serving as an early home for wood stove and wind energy businesses that would later influence sustainable building practices throughout the region.
The documentary showcases the continued vitality of the design-build movement today through the Yestermorrow Design Build School in Waitsfield. Founded in 1980, the school now offers an extensive year-round curriculum featuring courses and certificate programs in design, carpentry, woodworking, timber framing, and other related disciplines. Yestermorrow founder John Connell and Rood's parents, Bobbi and Mac Rood—an architect and longtime Yestermorrow board and faculty member—guide viewers through the unique Waitsfield 10 house.
Described as resembling a cube floating on its diagonal, the Waitsfield 10 sits on 10 acres along the Mad River. The house was developed by successive small groups of Yestermorrow students, each cohort experiencing the project's evolution while contributing their own layer to its development. These contributions include cement castings of student faces in the building's supports, distinctive fins on soaring vertical windows, and beautifully crafted countertops featuring contrasting wood elements.
Beyond serving as residents of the Waitsfield 10, the Rood family is actively facilitating new design-build opportunities. The property has evolved into an emerging community where young people, including several Yestermorrow alumni and instructors, are constructing their own innovative homes. The first of these new residents have already moved into their completed houses, continuing the legacy of architectural experimentation that began on Prickly Mountain more than half a century ago.
