The Hexayurt Project: Free Hardware Housing for the World(hexayurt.com)
hexayurt.com
The Hexayurt Project: Free Hardware Housing for the World
http://hexayurt.com/
21 comments
I just watched one of your youtube/talks, and you address the rural-vs-cities issue by saying half of everyone lives rural and its much harder to solve cities so its a place to start.
But as the suburbs have taught us, sprawl is incredibly costly. Raising the standard of living for spread out peoples is harder because by definition its going to involve more transport energy cost and less economies of scale.
Also, at an almost philosophical sense, the single-family dwelling is itself a symptom of the problem. Castle doctrine and every-man-is-an-island and all that. Shared walls mean shared lives, or more importantly, acknowledge the fact that we have shared lives and need to make the best of it.
I don't think we solve this via 1-unit structures housing <10 people a pop. And history shows that hundreds-unit structures over did it. How do we create cheap, open-source 10 - 100 unit, 2 - 6 floor, structures. Something that could actually go in those slums you mention (which these yurts would get destroyed in).
Anyway hope this didn't come off too critical, I really appreciate that you're even working on this problem and presenting it so clearly.
But as the suburbs have taught us, sprawl is incredibly costly. Raising the standard of living for spread out peoples is harder because by definition its going to involve more transport energy cost and less economies of scale.
Also, at an almost philosophical sense, the single-family dwelling is itself a symptom of the problem. Castle doctrine and every-man-is-an-island and all that. Shared walls mean shared lives, or more importantly, acknowledge the fact that we have shared lives and need to make the best of it.
I don't think we solve this via 1-unit structures housing <10 people a pop. And history shows that hundreds-unit structures over did it. How do we create cheap, open-source 10 - 100 unit, 2 - 6 floor, structures. Something that could actually go in those slums you mention (which these yurts would get destroyed in).
Anyway hope this didn't come off too critical, I really appreciate that you're even working on this problem and presenting it so clearly.
Ah, you want to take a look at https://angel.co/houslets which is looking at multi-story stuff with much the same design philosophy as the hexayurt (use whole panels, get modern materials deployed in sensible ways, keep the building process simple and so on) but pointed at urban densities.
I like this project a lot.
I like this project a lot.
> Castle doctrine and every-man-is-an-island and all that.
Careful. You're fighting millenia of human nature here. That typically doesn't end well.
Careful. You're fighting millenia of human nature here. That typically doesn't end well.
You think single-family homes are human nature?
Why focus on housing? Housing is one thing that people will find no matter where they are. It's hard to beat corrugated steel and tents in terms of cost. The bigger issue is land. Where are you going to put these yurts, aside from burning man?
> It's hard to beat corrugated steel and tents in terms of cost.
From TFA:
> In disaster relief applications the hexayurt can cost less than a tent, and be constructed in far larger quantities than tent supplies allow.
From TFA:
> In disaster relief applications the hexayurt can cost less than a tent, and be constructed in far larger quantities than tent supplies allow.
Reminds me of an idea I had http://runvnc.github.io/tinytenthouse/
How do you handle ventilation, heating/cooling, bathroom, fuel for cooking, etc.?
How do you handle ventilation, heating/cooling, bathroom, fuel for cooking, etc.?
There's a great AMA from the inventor for anyone interested - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2dnfyn/i_am_the_inven...
I don't see any discussion on that page about how this project helps house "the world" (which I assume to mean the developing world). It looks like the only places this has been used is in burning man, and there is no discussion of plans to deploy or sell them elsewhere.
It's been built in Haiti, Africa, Sri Lanka - test units, results positive. Getting over the hump on a deployment with refugees living in one (rather than the odd aid worker / volunteer) is taking time.
There's also this: http://files.howtolivewiki.com/somalia_or_sudan.mp4 I found the video on a search, and have not discovered who made it or what the story is, but it's clearly the kind of diffusion we've always hoped for!
There's also this: http://files.howtolivewiki.com/somalia_or_sudan.mp4 I found the video on a search, and have not discovered who made it or what the story is, but it's clearly the kind of diffusion we've always hoped for!
I think you're doing an epic job, keep up the good work.
As for suggestions: I think that you should recognize that the entities who are most likely to be able to deploy hexayurt broadly for humanitarian reasons (air drops, etc) are established businesses, well-funded startup companies, or individuals and groups who are in some way tightly coupled to the larger business community. Although these may groups vary on a diversity of issues, they all pretty much share one thing in common: they either
A. identify with what you would call a "statist" ideology or B. benefit financially from being perceived as not opposing the prevailing social norms of the local business community with regard to recognizing the state.
Therefor they are very likely weary of association with any project who's leader argues for a dramatic reform of those community standards (no matter how rational those underlying arguments may be).
My suggestion to you as someone who recognizes the enormous potential benefit of hexayurt technology is for you to perhaps adopt a softer approach towards corporate america and startup culture in general. Perhaps this approach could highlight the potential for corporate entities to rapidly catalyze positive externalities while generating strong network effects by leveraging a technology with an architecture that could make an impact globally via a relatively small pool of capital. To me it seems likely that the motivation for this kind of an outreach project might stem from the ability to rapidly surface a branding event by generating a humanitarian "PR wave" and then surfing it. This overall approach could serve as a mechanism for expanding global relationships, enhancing brand visibility in foreign markets, and even facilitating entre into new markets.
As it currently stands any corporation contemplating research into the deployment of a hexayurt grid as a humanitarian project faces several challenges. One challenge is that they must first somehow leverage a PR firm to figure out how to rebrand the underlying technology in order to separate the positive humanitarian PR from the negative PR stemming from the fact that the project was born out of a libertarian or anarchist social milieu, burning man, etc.
Another challenge is how to motivate other businesses to join in to see how far this can be developed and safeguarded all while fostering business relationships and strengthening brand identity in emerging markets.
TLDR: If you feel that corporatism is a problem, then perhaps instead of trying to attack that snake with a club, you could somehow tame it into consuming it's own tail like the mythological ouroboros.
As for suggestions: I think that you should recognize that the entities who are most likely to be able to deploy hexayurt broadly for humanitarian reasons (air drops, etc) are established businesses, well-funded startup companies, or individuals and groups who are in some way tightly coupled to the larger business community. Although these may groups vary on a diversity of issues, they all pretty much share one thing in common: they either
A. identify with what you would call a "statist" ideology or B. benefit financially from being perceived as not opposing the prevailing social norms of the local business community with regard to recognizing the state.
Therefor they are very likely weary of association with any project who's leader argues for a dramatic reform of those community standards (no matter how rational those underlying arguments may be).
My suggestion to you as someone who recognizes the enormous potential benefit of hexayurt technology is for you to perhaps adopt a softer approach towards corporate america and startup culture in general. Perhaps this approach could highlight the potential for corporate entities to rapidly catalyze positive externalities while generating strong network effects by leveraging a technology with an architecture that could make an impact globally via a relatively small pool of capital. To me it seems likely that the motivation for this kind of an outreach project might stem from the ability to rapidly surface a branding event by generating a humanitarian "PR wave" and then surfing it. This overall approach could serve as a mechanism for expanding global relationships, enhancing brand visibility in foreign markets, and even facilitating entre into new markets.
As it currently stands any corporation contemplating research into the deployment of a hexayurt grid as a humanitarian project faces several challenges. One challenge is that they must first somehow leverage a PR firm to figure out how to rebrand the underlying technology in order to separate the positive humanitarian PR from the negative PR stemming from the fact that the project was born out of a libertarian or anarchist social milieu, burning man, etc.
Another challenge is how to motivate other businesses to join in to see how far this can be developed and safeguarded all while fostering business relationships and strengthening brand identity in emerging markets.
TLDR: If you feel that corporatism is a problem, then perhaps instead of trying to attack that snake with a club, you could somehow tame it into consuming it's own tail like the mythological ouroboros.
This is a Hard Problem.
I could have taken the politics out in one of 99 ways, but I did not, and I'm willing to sacrifice 5 or even 10 years of hexayurt growth to keep the politics in.
The reason is simple: I want to politically organize the people who grow up in hexayurt refugee camps, getting their education over wifi and dreaming of a better, fairer world. So if I sell out my core values now to reach the refugees faster, I'm going to have a vastly less powerful offer of aid when I finally arrive there.
It's a very dark calculus, but the years of active sabotage that I've faced from aid organizations like UNHCR and Red Cross blocking the hexayurt's participation in testing programmes and similar bureaucratic interference have convinced me that the only way out of this mess is to disintermediate UNHCR and the Red Cross - to route around them as dark legacy - and to have refugees directly raise funds themselves over (say) YouTube and Bitcoin (or, hey, Ethereum) rather than hope for political change in the big orgs.
The big orgs need to lie that the status of refugee is temporary, and not tied to deeper political problems. But the average refugee is in the field for 15 years, and lying about their status being temporary is great for fund raising and locating host governments who are willing to have them, but absolutely horrible for the refugees: endless years in boiling hot / freezing cold tents, no services for education and long term health care, and so on. It's just garbage: if it was you in one of those camps, you'd think you were in a prison camp.
So we stand in defiant opposition to those lies: refugee is a generation-long or longer condition in most cases, and we insist on cycle-of-life support for the people who will be spending an entire phase of life in these camps.
In the short run, this insistence on truth costs me the short term support of the (hugely corrupt) NGOs. In the long run, I hope it buys me recognition and credibility among the refugees and former refugees that I hope will be the backbone of hexayurt deployments in the fullness of time.
I have to speak the truth as I recognize it today, in order to be recognized as not having been full of nonsense by the refugees when they are assessing where to put their support later.
Hard calls all round. Thank you for your thoughtful comment!
I could have taken the politics out in one of 99 ways, but I did not, and I'm willing to sacrifice 5 or even 10 years of hexayurt growth to keep the politics in.
The reason is simple: I want to politically organize the people who grow up in hexayurt refugee camps, getting their education over wifi and dreaming of a better, fairer world. So if I sell out my core values now to reach the refugees faster, I'm going to have a vastly less powerful offer of aid when I finally arrive there.
It's a very dark calculus, but the years of active sabotage that I've faced from aid organizations like UNHCR and Red Cross blocking the hexayurt's participation in testing programmes and similar bureaucratic interference have convinced me that the only way out of this mess is to disintermediate UNHCR and the Red Cross - to route around them as dark legacy - and to have refugees directly raise funds themselves over (say) YouTube and Bitcoin (or, hey, Ethereum) rather than hope for political change in the big orgs.
The big orgs need to lie that the status of refugee is temporary, and not tied to deeper political problems. But the average refugee is in the field for 15 years, and lying about their status being temporary is great for fund raising and locating host governments who are willing to have them, but absolutely horrible for the refugees: endless years in boiling hot / freezing cold tents, no services for education and long term health care, and so on. It's just garbage: if it was you in one of those camps, you'd think you were in a prison camp.
So we stand in defiant opposition to those lies: refugee is a generation-long or longer condition in most cases, and we insist on cycle-of-life support for the people who will be spending an entire phase of life in these camps.
In the short run, this insistence on truth costs me the short term support of the (hugely corrupt) NGOs. In the long run, I hope it buys me recognition and credibility among the refugees and former refugees that I hope will be the backbone of hexayurt deployments in the fullness of time.
I have to speak the truth as I recognize it today, in order to be recognized as not having been full of nonsense by the refugees when they are assessing where to put their support later.
Hard calls all round. Thank you for your thoughtful comment!
Thanks for the reply sir! Yeah it's definitely a Hard Problem. The futurist in me does agree with you that eventually a form of crowd-sourcing will likely come along which helps dramatically reduce bottlenecks and waste in the overall aid pipeline while increasing transparency for individual donors. I think that this is likely to come about due to the onrushing incline in global smartphone penetration rate paired with donation systems may which leverage emerging technology around micro-transactions. The first wave of low-cost android smart-phones will hit the developing markets in the not too distant future, so suddenly everyone will have a camera, and I think once that happens it'll be a whole new ball game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV3fgqhat60&t=16m <-- Dave McClure does a great job of explaining that phenomena and what it could mean to the IT startup ecosystem in the US and abroad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV3fgqhat60&t=16m <-- Dave McClure does a great job of explaining that phenomena and what it could mean to the IT startup ecosystem in the US and abroad.
PS: we've got at least five or seven companies doing short run commercial hexayurts for Burning Man, and one start up in the UK doing different markets.
I bless all of 'em, without wanting to get too involved (for fear people will think I'm picking favorites - my political neutrality (ironically) is important!)
I bless all of 'em, without wanting to get too involved (for fear people will think I'm picking favorites - my political neutrality (ironically) is important!)
As corporates have always done; co-opt actually sustainable ideas for their own needs. Hexayurts are deliberately not patented and free as in free speech, not free beer. The social bandwidth allows the idea to propagate naturally without being MTV'd and made microwaveable for the masses
(and of course the hexayurt is those hexagonal pod things you see all over Burning Man - I'm sure quite a few of you have camped in them and will be camping in one again in a couple of weeks, having the time of your lives!)
Neat designs; open source FTW.
Would love to go to BM, but my VW would probably dance its exhaust system off 50 miles out of town because it's "too cool" for emissions standards, right before deciding it's also time to nom-nom-nom the (nonadjustible) clutch. :'(
Would love to go to BM, but my VW would probably dance its exhaust system off 50 miles out of town because it's "too cool" for emissions standards, right before deciding it's also time to nom-nom-nom the (nonadjustible) clutch. :'(
What kind of VW is that? I've got a '71 Super Beetle and a '71 Karmen Ghia. I'd love to find an old camper to go with them (but rust here in central Pennsylvania hasn't left many locally).
'85 California Westy DeLuxe I got from Utah. I would go to the Westy / bus forums and look for VINs sold and maintained in dry areas or away from the coasts.
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I'll be around if you have any questions.