Vinay Gupta’s Hexayurt, a semi-permanent structure that can be built to house a family of eight from about $100’s worth of cheap material, is a critical solution for the mess in Haiti. If implemented in the current situation, hexayurts can house the brunt of displaced survivors until more permanent aid is forthcoming. Ask your local government and NGO bodies to consider using the hexayurt as part of their relief effort.

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 with a large group on to the wall, and fasten with more screws. This shelter will last for several years and costs less than $100. It may be ideal for a variety of disaster relief situations.

Here are the key points.

?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ 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.

?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ 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.

?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ 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.

(The Hexayurt)

This is a tremendous opportunity to provide emergency housing in Haiti. The Red Cross has reviewed it positively. How to get the materials in country soon enough to make a difference? A local group in Bennington, VT has begun an airlift movement. The 4x8 sheets could be loaded directly on the plane and dropped at the airport and assembled onsite, as opposed to the prefab version, but the materials still need to be moved out to the countryside where they’re needed. This gets a big thumbs up, but implementation becomes the question.