Special Screenings

ADFF: VANCOUVER  and HORNBY ARTS

present

Prickly Mountain and My Design/Build Life

Hornby Island Community Hall, 2115A Sollans Road, Hornby Island, BC V0R 1Z0

6:00 – Doors Open

7:00 – Screening

8:30 – Post screening conversation with Architects Bo Helliwell ( Helliwell + Smith), Michael McNamara (Blue Sky Design), Kyle Bergman ( ADFF Festival Director), Moderated by Adel Weder

About the Film

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 Waitsfield 10 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.