Hexayurt Project

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)

Please scroll down for the regular Hexayurt Project web site.

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

More info here, more coming soon!

The Open Toolbox will be building Hexayurts for the homeless in Macon, Georgia this Thanksgiving. Please consider coming along to help!

What is the Hexayurt?

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.

The Hexayurt Project also includes groundbreaking work (pdf) (backup link) on providing simple services like interior lighting at incredibly low cost.

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

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.
I have moved a stack of additional video links on infrastructure, poverty and the big picture here.
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 Factor-e Farm Plywood Hexayurt is great. Cost 80 cents a square foot. Great work guys! There is raw, unedit, public domain video footage from this event, and help fund their extremely cool ongoing research here. Send them money and they'll continue to be able to do great work like this.
Burning Man 2008 coverage from: Cities Go Green (great piece), WIRED, Tiny House Blog, The Black Rock Beacon (pdf) and video from The Black Rock Boutique via CurrentTV.
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.
I presented on the Hexayurt at the Netherlands Red Cross Innovative Sheltering conference. You can download the presentation here. Very low quality video is also available.
Hexayurts were built at the Pentagon in the little park in the center of the building, as part of the STAR-TIDES demonstration. National Defense Magazine has coverage.
WIRED News - Slideshow: Instant Housing and Designing for Disaster.
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.
TIDES Demonstration Notes (3mb PDF) (backup link) - a quick review of the gear at TIDES (but not the satellite systems, which I don't have the details on yet) and reprints of most of the boards from the event. Still need more on the solar cookers! (print, 25 mb) (backup link)
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!
- Pictures from TIDES - Mixed set with metadata tags (you can search for, say, hexayurts or stoves) - VIPs including General Ward of Africa Command, and Dr. Linton Wells II who organized the event - Technology, Shelters and Infrastructure - Another mixed set.
The Hexayurt won the Treehugger Participate! contest and was featured at Burning Man 2007.
Business Week also featured the hexayurt in a piece about the Open Architecture Network
The New York Times also mentioned Hexayurts in their coverage of Strong Angel.

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)

Hexayurts for Burning Man

Learn how to build a Hexayurt for next year, or for other recreational uses. (backup link)

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. Also check out STANDARRD - the group blog of the Sustianble Technologies Acceleration Network.

Subscribe to the Hexayurt discussion list

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