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.
The Disastr plan envisages using Hexayurts and ICT to temporarily rehouse entire cities in the event of nuclear terrorism or other large-scale disaster. This plan is also public domain.
The Hexayurt Project was involved in the creation of STAR-TIDES, US National Defense University's appropriate technology and disaster relief research group.
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.
The Open Toolbox
is our new consulting venture, focussed on bringing the Hexayurt and other free and open source appropriate technologies into practical application in the work of existing institutions.
STAR-TIDES, a sustainable technology network I helped create at National Defense University is demonstrating the hexayurt and
many other appropriate technologies at National Defense University this week, and the Pentagon next week. Here is WIRED's news on the event.
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'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)
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.
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.
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.
open hardware shelter technology
The Open Toolbox
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.
