Burning Man Has Become A Testing Ground For Extreme Architecture

[Disir]

Glade says that has turned Burning Man into a verifiable testing ground for designers, architects, and engineers to try out prototypes, particularly for lightweight, easy-to-assemble structures that could be used as disaster relief. “If after a week or 10 days the new idea or design is still up, that means it’s good,” he says. In other words, it didn’t get blown over.

Chief among these prototype structures is the hexayurt, a six-sided structure made from plywood and insulation. While it was initially designed for a disaster relief shelter competition, the hexayurt was first prototyped on the playa by the designer and entrepreneur Vinay Gupta in 2003 and is now a staple of the festival. Every year, dozens more of his open-source project’s 13 different models pop up throughout Black Rock City. The blueprints for building a hexayurt are available for free on the project’s website. But the structure’s reach extends beyond Burning Man–it was used as shelter during the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Burning Man Has Become A Testing Ground For Extreme Architecture

Burning Man 2017 | Burning Man
Fire and Ritual — Guidelines for Building and Burning Your Own Man

Burning Man is awesome stuff. I really like the above shot.

 

[Moonglow]

They did it at first with round balloon shaped ones...

 

[yiostheoy]

With everyone walking around there with their azzholes hanging out it seems more like a hemmorids convention than anything else.

When your azzhole flames like the burning man wood pile, you know you need Prep H.

 

[mamooth]

Guidelines for attending Burning Man.

1. Have a shitload of money.

2. No shirtcocking. That is, being a dude with a shirt and no pants.

 

[MaryL]

If these wonderful people can find a way to use that use hugemongous plastic trash island floating in the pacific, instead of fleeting little mind games with walking lumber piles on fire, that would impress the hell out of me.

 

[Old Rocks]

1. Finish your hexayurt at home. Definitely no board cutting, even for windows, on the Playa if you can avoid it. Reno parking lots etc. are not ideal either.
2. Transport your hexayurt safely. That seems to mean sandwiching the panels between two sheets of plywood and ratchet straps if you are using a roof rack. That is going to be heavy: make sure your roof rack / car can take it!
3. Make your tie downs good and strong. Candy caned rebar stakes, driven deep, or regular rebar with ends protected so nobody can cut themselves. User ratchet straps or a rope halo, and make sure it's tight enough that the wind cannot shift the unit a milimeter.
4. Put a smoke detector at the peak of every hexayurt. This is really important: the more hexayurts that are in use, the safer each one must be if we are going to maintain our safety record!
5. Make sure that every hexayurt has two exits. Even if one is taped shut - in case of fire. This is particularly critical if you have honeycombed hexayurts together. Fire is a real risk: please protect yourselves.

The Hexayurt Project: Free Hardware housing for the world

Knowing that we are going to have a very large earthquake where I live, possibly in my lifetime, projects like this are of interest to me. A quick construction shelter that would keep out the rain would be a god send when most of the regular buildings were no longer safe to live in.