On Friday May 11th at the Pixelache Festival in Helsinki, volunteers will be building a hexayurt shelter. What is a hexayurt? It is a structure that costs less a relief tent, can be built anywhere in the world at various sizes, and can be made from local materials. The hexayurt can be used as a emergency or relief structure or as a cheap easy structure for other uses.
The hexayurt that we are building at the Camp Pixelache Festival will be used as a sauna later this night (note: The Finns love saunas, and most households and hotels have saunas.) A the event will be Vinay Gupta, the developer of the free/open source emergency shelter Hexayurt who is participating in Camp Pixelache.
To make the simple version of the hexayurt, you build a wall by putting six sheets of plywood on their sides in a hexagon shape. Six more sheets of plywood are cut in in half diagonally, and these are screwed together into a shallow cone shape. The roof is lifted onto the wall by a large group of people, then it is fastened down with screws. The structure can be sealed, painted, or if you are in the desert covered with reflective materials.
The basic hexayurt design is a 166 square foot (15 sq meter) structure. The design can last for years and costs approximately $100 to make. The basic design can be improved with proper windows, doors, room partitions, stove fittings and other architectural features. Hexayurts have been built on the beach, at Occupy Pittsburgh, and at Burning Man.
Image Source:
http://hexayurt.com/
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