Meet the Architect: Dave Sellers

Dave Sellers, named one of the world’s top 100 architects by Architectural Digest, has designed Gesundheit’s Master Plan and preliminary designs. These designs were featured in Perspecta 29, Yale's architectural journal. Sellers designed Gesundheit's housing for staff, "the Dacha," which received an AIA Design Excellence Award in 2005 and was published on the back cover of Fine Homebuilding Magazine.

For Gesundheit, Sellers provides in-kind labor, helps solicit materials donations, and coordinates student groups from his Yestermorrow School of Design. This has saved 30% to 50% of the costs of Gesundheit building projects. For example, the Dacha was a $1 million dollar building built for $400,000. Dave Sellers’s accomplishments in architectural design and sustainable technology include:

  • Co-founder, Northern Power Co. to develop wind power technology
  • Co-founder, Vermont Iron Stove Co. to market high efficiency combustion techniques.
  • Competition winner, Green Mt. Valley School Gymnasium featuring Passive Solar design
  • Competition winner, completion of St. John the Divine Cathedral of NYC: Bio-shelter
  • Competition winner, Carmenet Winery, Sonoma, CA: Earth-sheltered, tunneled-in-rock design
  • Three AIA Awards of Excellence in 1999
  • Designed five residences featuring passive and active solar, wood backup, super-insulation, water storage for re-circulating heat, composting toilets, and/or windmills

Dave Sellers’s projects in community design include:

• Representing US at International Design conference in East Berlin, team leader for design strategies of new development in the medieval section of Berlin.
• Prickly Mountain Project (with Bill Rienecke). Ten units with solar, wind, wood-fired heat. (Published in Progressive Architecture, Global Architecture, Life Magazine, Fortune, the New York Times, Yale Alumni Magazine).
• Undertook Burlington Urban Design Study with Mayor (now Congressman) Bernie Sanders and the National Endowment. 200-year vision for Burlington, Vermont, and Chittenden County. (Winner, Progressive Architecture Design Award).

 


Completed Gesundheit! Designs:

  • Overall master plan
  • Preliminary designs of main buildings including: specialty treatment rooms, birthing rooms, gardens, waste treatment greenhouses, terminal care tower
  • Workshop Building, design & construction
  • Dacha Building, design & construction 
  • Farmhouse Master Plan
  • Chrysalis building, design & construction
  • Preliminary designs for Teaching Center
  • Preliminary designs for Clinic

Sellers' work focuses on designing and building with nature, with special emphasis on custom craftsmanship. His work in town and community planning has received national recognition for pedestrian and human-scaled settlement patterns.

Sellers has created preliminary drawings of the Teaching Center and Clinic. The architecture is designed to be “organic, playful, mischievous, and thoughtful,” Sellers explains.

 

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