COMMUNITY ECOLOGIES
Smokey House Center, a non-profit organization seated on a 5000-acre property just outside of Danby in Southern Vermont, works to maintain a working landscape that promotes sustainable agriculture and forestry practices that engage people in meaningful ways primarily through their keystone program the Living Lab. Community Ecologies aspires to act as an extension of the Living Lab, fostering relationships between people and place at three different scales.
1: at the largest scale participants from the Rubenstein School of the Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont will research and make forest health and land-use recommendations.
2: at the interstitial scale, workers from the region – in need of work or housing, can collaborate with Yoder farms to help with planting, harvesting, and canning. With extra help, the farm may be able to provide more goods to the region and to others living/working at SHC in time creating a hyper local food economy.
3: at the most intimate scale, this project hopes to directly engage New Frameworks, a local sustainable building group, incorporating tacit learning about natural materials. This implies space for experimentation with plant-based building materials and workshops on traditional joinery for other members of the local or regional community.
At each, people come together to work and learn from the place in which they live, in doing so becoming part of the ecological community itself.
Design Studio 06
Worker housing + supporting
Danby, VT
Date
2024
2024