The Hexayurt is a prize-winning shelter you can
build yourself for about $200(backup link).
Suitable raw materials
include common building materials ( fire safe insulation boards,) hexacomb cardboard and
plastic. You cut six 4' x 8' panels in half diagonally to make the roof, and use six
more whole panels
to form the walls. It takes about two hours. The
design(backup link)
is in the public domain.
Different materials are appropriate for different uses -
insulation, extended life, low cost, durability in extreme environments
and so on. The design is in the public domain, and is in active development
as a Free/Open Source style project.
Important safety notice.
Please do not build hexayurts out of any flammable material. In the past, people have built them from non-fire rated materials including polyisocyanurate insulation (Tuff-R from Dow, often sold at Home Depot.) I do not regard that as safe if the building is exposed to sources of ignition like open flame, or mains electrical devices. Any non-fire rated substance should not be used for camping, and is generally suitable only for demonstration purposes.
News & Press
The Global Swadeshi Network is a group of people examining infrastructure and technology from a "right-livlihood" perspective, based on Gandhi's concept of swadeshi - "self-reliance, or standing on your own two feet."
Hexayurt built at the University of Eindhoven, in association with the follow up for Innovative Sheltering. We got some rather good video at this event, which you can see at this blog post.
Anybody thinking of using Hexayurts in San Diego should
read this report first.
I think the flammability risk of TUFF-R and similar materials very real, although greatly diminished with Thermax HD,
and nearly non-existent with hexacomb cardboard.
Hexayurts were built
(scroll down) at the STAR-TIDES demonstration of refugee infrastructure systems and emergency shelters at National Defense University.
I helped organized
STAR-TIDES and the demonstration was, from what I hear, a roaring success!
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)
We would like to move to a proper community-supported model
or somebody could offer me a job developing the Hexayurt
and other community technology projects.
I do software, whole systems thinking, poverty issues
environmental policy analysis and foreign policy.
Frequently in the same paper.
