# RAW FOOTAGE Hexayurt Folding Combined Endeavor

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [329]. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: video, 2012-05-04 (YouTube upload date), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA. Text: automatic captions, partly corrected
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009), before the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Build evidence for portable, rapid-deploy shelter.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - Folding hexayurt (2007): An 8-foot hexayurt that folds into a single flat package and unfolds in minutes, first shown on video in...
  - Sheet-waste question (1995): The question behind the Hexayurt: how to build a dome from 4x8 sheets without wasting 25 to 40 percent of... (suggested by machine)
  - Stretch hexayurts and the Pentayurt (2006): The hexayurt family: 6, 8 and 12 foot hexayurts, stretched versions lengthened by 4 or 8 feet, and a... (suggested by machine)
  - Camp Danger hinge (2010): Community-designed folding Hexayurt held together by tape hinges. (suggested by machine)
  - Hexacloak (2023): A hooded cloak from standard 60-inch cloth with no manufacturing step: drape, tie, twist a double loop.... (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - hexayurt builds: Hexayurt variants, many designed and built by the community. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - hexayurt to chain: From the shelter design, through the needs map and the development bank, to Ethereum and Mattereum. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - standard SKUs: A survival kit built only from standard, mass-produced parts. (through a work suggested by machine)
- Topics: Hexayurt shelter design & project — tape, hexayurt, roof (79%)
- Importance: core-text score 0.32 (1.00 is the top), number 219 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [375] [Folding Hexayurt Briefing (2007)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/375.md): same career work: Folding hexayurt
  - [373] [Folding Hexayurt Opening and Closing (2007)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/373.md): same career work: Folding hexayurt
- On the same works, just before: [751] [Vinay Gupta and Julie Danger on Camp Danger Semi Folding... (2011)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/751.md); [193] [Nearodesic Polyhedron Hexayurt Dome – Morgan Engel's Site (2011)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/193.md); [114] [Tools To Not Die With: An Interview with Vinay Gupta,... (2011)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/114.md)
- On the same works, just after: [327] [Papa Bill's Stew-Stick Jam - Marmaduke Dando - Second Song (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/327.md); [321] [Vinay Gupta talking at FreeAndReal / The Telaithrion... (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/321.md); [310] [Engineers Without Borders Sheffield Plywood Hexayurt How To (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/310.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: RAW FOOTAGE Hexayurt Folding Combined Endeavor, video, 2012-05-04, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [329], https://guptaoption.com/texts/329.md.

Other speakers' passages are removed, so there can be gaps.

## Passages
[0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=0s) thank you you know okay

[10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=600s) small unit so that he's got the wall as well so now we want to make another just like this so the two are not connected it's two separate universities if you don't want audio we can always turn it off in the video I'm better to capture The Knockout turret I didn't realize

[12:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=750s) welcome yeah

[15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=900s) that's so what happens is when you want to hold the

[17:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=1050s) and this one the folding mechanism relies on this might be easier to show them down okay

[20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=1200s) the way that we had it was that they split between the two walls was that a corner so like this and the corners hold out rather than folding in so at that point uh it wouldn't have fallen what we actually want is not for the fold in the walls to be like this but we want the fold to do like this so to actually cause the building to full what you do is lift one wall and then push inwards and that's what starts to build into concertina so we have to we have to have the split in the center of the wall rather than not a corner because the corners are the sort of strong points of the structure and the walls of the weaker ones that fold into actually let the building sort of compress what gives the building its structural strength in use is that once you fold it out you guy it down which means that this lifting action isn't at all available to things like a wind load is the going down prevents that sort of wall from lifting so they wanted to guide down the building secure at the top just here just just a little piece here so can you see all of this no I can't so can you see all of this no I can't okay so uh basically this is an equilateral sorry an isosceles triangle so it's the same width as it is where are we right where you are okay so um these are the roof triangles so the triangle is uh it's isosceles and it's the same width as it is high so that means you can take a standard sheet of material like the stuff we're using here this is a standard one by two building material so in America you can get it has four by eights this is 120 by 60 centimeters it's a very common ratio for building materials so you take one of those sheets you cut it in half and that gives you one of these isosceles triangles then what we did was cut angles onto the board so this is a 15 degree angle and tape them into this hinge mechanism so as you actually open out the board structure into the Rooftop

[22:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=1350s) you can see how that 15 degree angle is what gives you the curvature of the surface so the 15 degree cut on this surface is what means that it meets precisely at the edges and the 90 degree surface here gives you the rigidity on the center point so the angle cutting is what gives you the Precision of the fit and then if we look at the way that it folds you can see on the angled edges the outer edges the tape is on the inside so we have a hinge on the inner edge of the board whereas here the hinges on the outside so the alternating hinging on the inside and the outside is what gives you the structure and the same principles that work on the walls alternating hinging on the inside and the outside is what lets you concertina material that has significant thickness and the same approach would work even if the words were three or four inches thick and the rest is just a great deal of this strapping tape so the tape is bi-directional filament tape this is 3M 85.95 remember correctly so you've got strands of fiberglass going both horizontally and vertically and this has about uh 600 pound or 300 kilogram braking stream so it's extremely strong and 120 meter roll is about 12 dollars U.S so it's very very very cheap and incredibly strong and that's really what gives these buildings their strength the panel material is basically polystyrene with a thick silver foil facer we call it polyisocyanurate and it's not really a building material until you couple it with something which has got this kind of intense tensile strength oh okay so let's put the roof on so basically uh the best way of doing this is going to be to bring the sides together and you know probably probably we'll just use a little piece of tape on each side just to hold it in place while we get the roof on then once the roof is on we'll cut those and we'll see if it actually folds properly

[25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=1500s) and one person should go inside to hold the roof as it comes down so who's going to go inside it's always good okay don't come in for a second and I can show you the uh okay so the fit on the roof is also a matter of cutting the angles you can see the top of this wall was angled so this is angled at 30 degrees the bottom of the roof pieces is also angled at 30 degrees and when you bring those two together you get a tight fit okay let's just slide it down so it's on so the roof is firmly on the walls over the corners and push in yeah it just slides right into place like that and then once you tape the sections of the roof it becomes very secure wind loads are carried across the entire edge of the surface because you've got complete connection between the edge of the roof and the edge of the wall and then a strap of tape goes continuously all the way around the building often three or four times and that forms what they call a tension ring so if you have a wind load on here that would tend to cause the cone which forms the roof display like this and it counts play because you've got this you know 1800 kilos of tape going around the outside and that's really where the building gets its strength that's what we call a hexayurt it carries its loads in exactly the same way as a Mongolian Earth does okay so let's tape this in place um what you want to do is just for the because we want to make sure that we have the hinge incorrect first so just run a single piece of tape from

[27:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=1650s) just inside the corner across the middle just from about here to about here and then what we'll do is once we know that it's folding correctly we'll handle the corners which are a slightly different process can you push from the inside on this corner so it lines up tightly yeah there we go no no no yeah that's a little out of whack here what's going on yeah it's a little it's a little of alignment here so we should cut this tape and then put it on again we'll just need it but cut at the seam because if you peel the tape off it will tear off the funnel yeah by the time you have an error like this in a corner it won't fold is instead of keeping this side next we'll tip on the opposite side next so that we try to yeah

[30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=1800s) and that these kind of buildings are not really what we would use for sort of improvised use in the field this is very much a prototype of what you do if you're going to factory produce them the fields constructed buildings don't use this folding mechanism you just build them panel by panel and they've got much wider tolerances okay all right yep yep as long as this Edge is as long as this semen the seamer correctly lined up the building will fold if they were misaligned a little it would cause problems this this seamlessly that's the important part okay so um we need to tape this side a little better but the principle works yeah that's okay why is that high

[32:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=1950s) cup um yeah I'm trying to figure out when that's happening yeah just trim oh all right no is there anything else causing that problem I'm trying to figure out where this wall piece is okay ah yeah we didn't okay we've got to put it back in we have to get it you have to open the sides pretty much at the same time okay well then maybe we can do it yep takes a little bit of practice to get the fold and the unfold correct and we need it slightly tighter tolerances on the triangle cutting but it basically works yes for anchoring on the ground um you take additional strands of tape and run them up over the top and then down the other side and then you make a thing called a tape anchor in fact I'll show tape anchors in a minute so um what's about a couple more times so that we're kind of smooth at opening and closing it and um probably good so the trick for the the trick for opening and closing is to lift opposite sides of the building so if you lift at that corner and you lifted this corner and then to push in at this point so as they lift you push in here and then boom there we go nice very nice it's not bad I know it's on pop it so same thing in Reverse your lift lift those two sides out okay and then pop okay we got it wrong got it wrong go back into the middle back end back end back in

[35:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=2100s) there so when it comes when you were opening it the trick is to get this part out quickly okay so is it okay so start from flat yeah the middle one the middle those two corners have to come out quickly okay so lift there we are let's get that center part out ah okay hang on so how did we do it the first time when it went easily it didn't go better the last time I'm just trying to figure out why well I guess we could just try popping it right no no because it opens so it closes right so it's just a question of figuring out the right place to apply the force as we open it one two three but the seam is in the wrong place doing that learn something new every day okay let's open it up again okay that there we go is it okay or is it Terror no there we go Scott Okay so yeah we need to retake this side okay so where were you guys applying the force that made it open more easily that time do we have any idea because it's not the way that it's opening is the way that I would have predicted for models oh sorry the way that it's closing is the way I would have predicted from Models but the way that it's opening is not the way I would have predicted

[37:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=2250s) um let's try taping the seam up again and give another try for now uh yeah just reinforce it like this we have a small Gap here um this one point is where all the small errors from The Cutting of the boards accumulate so this is a um there's two processes there's error diffusion and there's error collection so if you get it right all the layers kind of even out and if you get it wrong all the layers come to one place and then collector and that's this point here and normally you would just tape over that and it would cover it but in a folding building you need more Precision on the hinges yeah okay so let's close it up again so just okay yeah okay there we go are we okay you can close but we can't open yeah yeah because we have it doubled up here we still have an entire wall That's closed here okay push out the sides foreign okay make sure that we're opening all of the sides there we go

[40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=2400s) there it goes I now just flip it onto it flip it the right way up just turn it over not too bad so um definitely a little bit work on construction choreography to find the best way to open um but the close is fairly easy and that's probably just a matter of practice um what I think from the models is that what you need is strings which are tied to critical points on the inside and hang on the outside so as you're pulling you're pulling on these strings that cause the panels to unfold but you know not bad not bad for a first prototype and the clues is very simple I mean it's just you push on points and it closes but the open is much more yeah because there's nothing to grab onto like if these if these points had like anchors attached to them yeah totally after that okay you're right so there it is so what do you want to still film um tape anchors okay and uh I guess that's about it okay do you want to take a break birds in the woods you know people are beginning to use them we've also heard a couple of reports of homeless people living in them although we haven't seen any pictures yet so somewhere there's some enterprising hopeless guy who designed a downloaded the design from the internet went to Home Depot with fifty dollars and built them built one with the basic materials kinda crazy so should we try it again well you know I mean one of these days will get just the right angle and we'll understand how to make it work and once we understand why then it will be easy yeah once understanding comes understanding comes so it's puppet Foods again yep pretty close one two three one two three closed all right so why don't they open that easily what's different between closing and opening that's so hot makes it so hard yeah I don't know either that's why I'm

[42:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=2550s) asking you yeah pull out this side okay so let's give let's give that a try okay you've got it no what did we do that made it easy that time cooled on the two up to end the ends it will lift up and that makes it easy okay let's give that a try again okay so what did you do which which so we pulled on this and the other side in the same place okay okay so basically you're pulling Halfway Around from where the door opening is from where the from where the seam that splits is you're pulling Halfway Around let's try that now easy wonderful wonderful well done we got it excellent excellent good work so now we know how to open it easy just like we close it easy Splendid so we document tape anchors and then we're done okay I think uh so we need to cut six inches off one of these pieces of pipe

[45:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=2700s) uh this might be easier to do if I'm about a table actually because I'm going to be picking things up and putting them down this building and that entire building is basically a one-man carry it weighs probably 30 pounds maybe 40. so it's basically a kite um the strength of the building's connection to the ground is really critical so you have this tape you know the three four hundred pound braking strain um and then the question is how do you attach the tape to a rope that can go down into a tent pack so you've got a big you know like a 17 inch metal stake with a rope coming off it and somewhere you've got to attach the Rope to the Builder and the trick is to use this these tape anchors so you take a piece of PVC tube um let's start this proper way so the first thing you do is you cut off a piece of tape and just store it for a moment then you take the tape and wind it around a piece of PVC tube like this you stick the tape Sticky Side to Sticky Side and then wrap it around the PVC pipe back onto the tape see how that works so it's a sticky side to Sticky Side contact on this side and then it comes all the way around and back onto the tape on the other side so what that produces is a very very strong anchor so now you can take your rope and put your rope through the PVC pipe and then down to the peg

[47:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=2850s) and in a static version not in the folding version what you have to do is you take the tape and make a tape anchor and then keep repeat the actual roof seam of the building using the piece of tape that already has the anchor on the bottom so you have a continuous filament of tape that comes all the way up the building to the point and then down onto the other side and then you make another takeham curve on the other side so you wind up with 12 strips of tape that come up and over the building crisscrossing in all directions and then the building is guide down at those tape anchors and is very very securely tied to the ground and this is one of the most important parts of the whole building system because otherwise you're left with a building which is you know attached by tape that has nothing actually holding it to the ground or you've got some kind of system where you wind up with Point loading like if you crisscross ropes over the building where the Rope meets the roof there would be a weak point because all the way the building would be pressing against that single rope and it would cut into the panel material whereas with this the wood is very evenly distributed along this Congress points of the building which is the seams that's tape emperor how are we doing for time this is the construction choreography for making a fixed hexayurt so not the folding ones but if you're making them from pieces in the field this is the way that you assemble the roof the reason assembling the roof is hard is on a full-sized unit uh it's eight feet from here to here and the material is too fragile to take your weight if you crawl on the roof to run your tape all the way up the seam so at that point you can reach about halfway up and then past that how do you tape it so the answer is that you start on the ground because the roof is pretty light so what you actually do is you assemble the roof on the ground following this pattern and then once the roof is done you lift it up onto the walls so um okay could only give me a hand with the tape yeah just hold that right there thank you so you start by placing two panels like this on a beam so this stick here is the width of one panel like this so if you're working with four by eights this is four feet um then we covered how to make tape

[50:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=3000s) anchors before so you take your tape and you make a tape anchor and then you place it right about here and run the tape halfway up your panel so on an eight foot piece this is about as high as a human being can reach then you get so you have one person who starts here and rolls it up the side then they pass it to another person who stands about here and they then roll it all the way up to the point okay let's go hold it right like that so then you do the same thing on the other side so you take the seam same way one person rolls it down halfway then the other person takes it and brings it down to the bottom then you make a tape anchor at the bottom then you cut the tape so in this way you've got this continuous filament that goes all the way from the tape anchor up to the point of the roof and then all the way down the other side and after you've done that you do the same thing again so you take another panel we're doing this wrong one piece here and one piece on the opposite side and then you repeat the same procedure roll the tape halfway up pass it to another person you roll it halfway down pass it to another person take it down tape anchors on both ends and you repeat this process as you work your way all the way around the roof until you get to the final seam and the final seam you can't take because there's no place for the person to stand here to take the roll so at that point what you do is you stretch out 20 feet of tape very tightly between two people line it up so it's over the top seam and then lower it very very carefully so it lines up properly right down the final seam and once it's lowered into place you just brush it into place with a stick or a paint roller or a piece of like broom

[52:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziMw67WpJA&t=3150s) or something along those lines and at that point what you have is this continuous filament strapping going over the roof 12 different ways with anchor points all the way around and that's very strong three people who are skilled can make a roof in about an hour so that's that's the construction choreography for the roofs of the non-folding unit so that's it very strong it's impossible to make these buildings there's just no way to do it and the same way the opening and the closing if you don't know how to do the opening and the closing you're never going to work it out so this is this is the you know it's very simple after you know but until you know it's impossible yeah okay cool well thank you very very much for all your help really fantastic working with you you're really good at this and uh more tomorrow

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End of [329] RAW FOOTAGE Hexayurt Folding Combined Endeavor. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.
Read next: next on the same works, [327](https://guptaoption.com/texts/327.md) Papa Bill's Stew-Stick Jam - Marmaduke Dando - Second Song (2012); the most closely related, [375](https://guptaoption.com/texts/375.md) Folding Hexayurt Briefing (2007); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.