PRICKLY MOUNTAIN

MY DESIGN/ BUILD LIFE

A feature documentary about a counter culture expression of architecture, and a girl who grew up in it.

About the film.

Those wacky architects.

In the late ’60s and ’70s, a group of architects landed in Vermont with big ideas and a simple plan: to stop just designing buildings and start making them too. Drawing from Bauhaus ideals but rejecting the rigidity of academia, they built by hand, embraced mistakes, and turned architecture into a wild, creative experiment. More than just structures, they built a way of life—one rooted in community, empowerment through doing, and the belief that process matters more than perfection.

Stitched into this story are the decades that shaped design/build, told through the houses that best captured each era. The film moves through the radical homes of the ’60s, where sculptural forms and bold ideas first took shape, into the ’70s, when creativity exploded alongside experiments in alternative energy and materials. By the ’80s, Yestermorrow Design/Build School was founded along with the crown jewel Waitsfield10 house.

Allie grew up in the middle of it all, playing in half-finished houses where learning happened by trying and failing, and trying again. Years later, she picks up a camera to trace the movement’s history, only to find herself pulled back into its ethos—this time, by building a house of her own. Both nostalgic and full of momentum, the film is a celebration of making cool stuff, messing up, and making more cool stuff—a reminder that the best way to build anything is to just start.

MEET THE TEAM

Allie Rood | Director

Allie graduated with a BA in Art with a focus on sculpture and digital media, from Whitman College. She is also an alumnus of Yestermorrow Design/ Build school. Allie is a filmmaker who has spent over a decade telling stories in the outdoor industry. She considers Prickly Mountain, a documentary about her hometown, to be a very personal passion project; she has been working on it for over eight years. She is currently based in Ōtautahi, Christchurch.
Oliver Dawe | Editor

Oliver Dawe is a filmmaker based in Ōtautahi, Christchurch - New Zealand. Oliver Dawe eats, sleeps and breathes film, and continues to passionately pursue his filmmaking dreams with a gifted eye for crafting story. He is no stranger to design, being the son of a sculptor, Oliver has been an integral piece of the Design/ Build Movie creation. After editing an engrossing 8 minute sizzle reel, he has come on board to craft the feature length documentary for Prickly Mountain.
Corey Hendrickson | DOP

Corey is a Director and DP working in television, documentary film and branded content. He lives in Middlebury, Vermont and started his business in 2005. Allie connected with Corey after seeing his work in the Collective Quarterly 2 magazine publication in 2014. Corey has been an incredible sounding board, source of support and DP for much of the film’s year production. When he is not behind a camera Corey can be found exploring on his bike.

Help us with post-production

We are almost there! Thank you everyone for your continued support. Watch this space while we prepare to run a Seed & Spark campaign to take this film to the finish line. We need your support for post-production costs. This includes: fine cutting, music licensing, distribution and film festival costs, animation, color correction and audio mastering.

We are fiscally sponsored by Women in Film & Video which is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, community benefit organization so your donation is tax-deductible to the fullest extent.

DONATE

What people are saying.

Some movements are about radical innovation and some are about re-centering - Design/ build is interesting from both points of view.

Danny Sagen | design/ build architect
So much about architecture has moved away from the tangible craft of building and improvisation. It is the right time to look back on this.

Paul Goldberger | author, architecture critic and lecturer
There is a hunger for this topic - people who feel the disconnect to the physical/ mechanical world can gain a renewed sense that "working with my hands isn't just a pleasure, but a part of my humanity."

Publisher for The New Atlantis article “Shop Class as Soul Craft”

BEHIND THE SCENES

In 2022, Allie and her partner Forrest moved back to Vermont to have students design and build their home with the 2022 Yestermorrow Design/ Build School semester program. This is a little “BTS” of that process.