The Hexayurt Project open hardware shelter technology



The Hexayurt is a new kind of sheltering solution.

To make the simplest hexayurt, make a wall by putting six sheets of plywood on their sides in a hexagon. Cut six more sheets in half diagonally, and screw them together into a shallow cone. Lift the roof on to the wall with a large group of people, then fasten it down with more screws. Seal and paint it for durability. Your basic hexayurt is complete.

This shelter will last for years in most climates and costs less than $100. This basic design can be improved with proper windows, doors, room partitions, stove fittings and other architectural features. More durable materials could give it a very long life.

It may be ideal for a variety of disaster relief situations.

Here are the key points.
  • Hexayurts can be built in plywood/OSB for less than $100 for a 166 square foot (15 sq meter) building. See the Plywood hexayurt how-to video.
  • Hexayurts can be made in a variety of sizes using simple tools from industry standard 4'x8' (1.2x2.4m) sheets with zero waste and can be made successfully from many different materials, like plywood, OSB, coroplast, composites, hexacomb cardboard or other honeycombs and polyiso insulation boards. We also have new work from Edmund Harriss on quad-sized hexayurt-like domes which share the zero-waste property with the hexayurt itself. These are huge and very exciting.
  • Hexayurts are public domain with no copyright or patent, meaning anybody can build as many as they like for free.

Depending on your choice of materials, a Hexayurt can last for years or even decades. In some long stay applications this could cut the cost of providing shelter to 10% of the cost of using standard relief tents. The hexayurt enables regional shelter self sufficiency, where in a crisis, pre-trained local builders or military personnel can work with first responders to rapidly create shelter from materials in the local supply chain, typically plywood or OSB.

This could prove particularly useful in areas with large scale repeated rehousing needs, such as the Hurricane Belt or flood-prone areas like Bangaldesh. Materials can be trucked in from near by unaffected areas at substantially lower cost than airfreighting in tents: in fact, the typical $100 air freight on a $350 relief tent is enough to pay for a whole hexayurt. We are actively seeking NGO partners to field-test this radically lower cost sheltering solution.

Science for Humanity is helping us coordinate research on the hexayurt with scientific and engineering institutions.
Vinay Gupta

twitter - about me - project map - policy work - email
I'm currently in London.

The main Hexayurt knowledge repository is on Appropedia, the open source appropriate technology wiki. Also see the Hexayurt schematics, plans for larger hexayurts and SketchUp 3d hexayurt models. The hexayurt is part of a wider poverty alleviation strategy called the Soft Development Path which is described best in the Ending Poverty with Open Hardware talk.

Vinay is currently working on infrastructure-centric resilience and disaster relief at Buttered Side Down, a British resilience anddisaster relief consultancy.

Important safety notice. Please read the Hexayurt Safety Information page on Appropedia for news on using Tuff-R / R-Max to make Hexayurts for Burning Man and similar events.

News & Press

Hexayurt Project at Appropedia

Appropedia provides the main information site for the Hexayurt Project, and most of the links on this page will take you to the relevant information on Appropedia.

Hexayurts for Refugees and Disaster Relief

Refugees are a special case of the very poor. This PDF outlines how we can use hexayurts and decentralized infrastructure to provide many basic services very inexpensively (backup link) , in a way that suits the living conditions of both refugees and the very poor in general. You can also see an updated, simplified PDF here.

There is also some material which applies to off-the-grid living situations, like Mountain Huts for camping, occasional-use cabins and so on.

Hexayurts for disaster relief could use the $100 per house on-site factory approach. This is also how we would anticipate hexayurt fabrication in the developing world, rather than shipping out polyiso insulation panels..

Networked Domestic Disaster Response

Disastr.org is a plan (short intro) which has been examined by the American Red Cross and FEMA, for sheltering people after disasters like Katrina through community preparedness and working together. The basic plan is to fabricate hundreds of thousands of hexayurts from materials already in the building supply warehouses to shelter up to millions of people in a disaster. (backup link)

Treehugger Radio did an interview which contains more information, or you can check out this blog post for a quick introduction. (backup link)

Superstruct!

We've been participating in the Institute for the Future Superstruct game. If you're interested in the Hexayurt Project superstruct activity, please see the table below for links between the 2019 scenario, and the current 2008 projects. We also won some awards! (see 22:30 "taking it seriously" and 41:30 "plausibly surreal" at this video link, text page later)

Real 2109 Superstruct Scenario
The Hexayurt Project - you're here! The Hexayurt Project Superstruct
2008 videos: you're probably in the best place for those! 2019 Videos (in order):
Field report from DCAR
Teaching SERAA Mapping (whiteboard)
DCAR leaked communications intercept (make us look bad)
DCAR - the whole story of the battle and the aftermath
Somaila, Darfur DCAR - The Refugee State
The Global Swadeshi Network on Ning The Global Swadeshi Superstruct
World Help Training Center a Convetible Community SERAA - South East Resilience Action Area Superstruct
The CheapID Identity Services Architecture paper. CheapID intro here Open Source Biometrics / Digital Identity OpenID, Seeds ATM, and Bright Green all either user or are similar to CheapID. (not my structs!)
Appropedia.org and Open Source Ecology (sister project) The Unplugged Superstruct
My Blog
Soft Development Paths at Gupta Option.com
My Superstruct 2019 Blog
My Superstruct SEHI Homepage





          
THE FIRST HEXAYURT HAS BEEN BUILT IN HAITI
The Hexayurt in Haiti? shows how to build a cheap ($200-$300?) plywood hexayurt which is being evaluated for use in Haiti. You can see a hexayurt built by Grass Roots United in early June 2010 to the right.

Hexayurt Country is our national-level strategy for reconstruction in Haiti.

Wired and United Nations Dispatch discuss the hexayurt.

Hexayurts for Burning Man

Burning Man Hexayurt Happy Hour at 4:15 & A, 5PM-7PM on Wednesday September 1 hosted by Swami G of the Hexayurt Mandala.

Corey's folding hexayurt video gives a pretty good sense of how it all works.
Learn how to build a Hexayurt for recreational use. (backup link). Here's a step-by-step checklist for building a hexayurt for Burning Man.


This 12 minute video gives a petty good overview of the process. (mpeg). Unfortunately the folding hexayurt project fell through - it's DIY all the way for now.
Woody's Pup Hexayurt is mentioned in the video and can be good for demonstrations etc.

The Hexayurt Community

If you are blogging or have pictures of hexayurts, please tag "hexayurt" so people can find hexayurt pictures on Flickr and follow hexayurt blog posts at Technorati.

Join the Hexayurt communities on the Hexayurt mailing list or on the Hexayurt tribe.

Subscribe to the Hexayurt discussion list
Email:
Browse Archives at groups.google.com

When we stop pretending


What do we do when we stop pretending? (audio, 10mb MP3)
Vinay Gupta's introduction to the George Monbiot/Dougald Hine discussion at the Dark Mountain festival. A ten minute presentation on the present and the future of environmentalism and social justice from a Gandhian perspective. You can also hear my one hour Dark Mountain session on collapsonomics.

TEDxEWB


Enabling Humanitarian Innovation - TEDxEWB (Engineers Without Borders.) Well produced with good quality audio! Talk slides (pdf).

New and Developed


Africa Gathering London 2010. The video is very quiet. Louder MP3 of the talk. Talk slides (pdf).

The Guardian on Swadeshi


Video on Gandhi's swadeshi (local self-reliance), the British "Big Society", resilience and appropriate technology featuring Richard Stallman and Vinay Gupta. I appear about half way through, and again near the end.
View on The Guardian web site (opens in new window.)
See Global Swadeshi, our international social network.
Thanks to Heydon Prowse and Will Pine for making the film.

The Plywood Hexayurt

Ending Poverty with Open Hardware


Discussion, and links to HQ video, the presentation slides, and so on.

from the Reykjavik Digital Freedoms Conference.
Donate to Science for Humanity's hexayurt fund here.
Thanks to Don't Panic for the film!

Hexayurts for Haiti


Grassroots United is Sam Bloch's organization. Science for Humanity is raising money for research.

The Folding Hexayurt

Click for youtube version.

The Reykjavik Briefing


This is a clip from the Reykjavik Briefing - go there to download the rest of the presentation and PDFs of the chart. Enjoy.

The Formenshus Folding Hexayurt

Small Folding Hexayurt

2 Minute Overview Video - Play This!


Watch an interview with Vinay Gupta and Robert Vrtis (OSD)

Hexayurt Tour from Burning Man



Additional video links on infrastructure, poverty and the big picture here.





Remember the hexayurt design is public domain!

Leave a message or discuss Hexayurts. Contact us.

Vinay's blog. A collection of Vinay's writing. Appropriate Technology is Foreign Policy work.

Fiction about the long term vision.
If you made it this far, you should read this