# 15 minute video on how to make Hexayurts for Burning Man

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [339]. 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=hU7pzfUH9oA. 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): Practical build instructions for the shelter.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - 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)
  - Hexayurt (2002): A public-domain disaster shelter made from whole 4x8 building panels with one diagonal cut. (suggested by machine)
  - First hexayurt built (2003): The first Hexayurt prototype, built at Burning Man from cardboard panels. (suggested by machine)
  - Folding hexayurt (2007): An 8-foot hexayurt that folds into a single flat package and unfolds in minutes, first shown on video in... (suggested by machine)
  - Camp Danger hinge (2010): Community-designed folding Hexayurt held together by tape hinges. (suggested by machine)
  - Laziness, Impatience and Hubris (2011): Talk at c-base, Berlin: Larry Wall's three virtues of a programmer applied to building, by a hackitect. (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - STAR-TIDES: The National Defense University project and the papers around it. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - fiction draws on: The work that fed the fiction. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - 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)
  - nuclear / panflu: Pandemic, evacuation and rehousing plans. (through a work suggested by machine)
- Topics: Hexayurt shelter design & project — tape, hexayurt, roof (53%); Burning Man shelter building (11%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: Progressive Building Solutions (2 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2008, 1 undated); survival needs (1 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); refugee shelter (2 here; 30 sources in all, earliest dated 2002); FEMA (1 here; 11 sources in all, earliest dated 2002); Folding hexayurt (1 here; 13 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 1 undated); refugees (2 here; 84 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 3 undated); Pentagon (1 here; 39 sources in all, earliest dated 2002); Burning Man (2 here; 90 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 1 undated); Hexayurt Project (1 here; 70 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 4 undated)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): survival needs
- Importance: core-text score 0.29 (1.00 is the top), number 260 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [310] [Engineers Without Borders Sheffield Plywood Hexayurt How To (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/310.md): close in content (cosine 0.91)
  - [294] [Practice Safe Hex - Burning Man Hexayurt Safety Checklist! (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/294.md): close in content (cosine 0.91)
- On the same works, just before: [360] [ZOOM0003 (2011)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/360.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); [725] [Vinay Gupta l Plausible utopias | Meaning 2012 (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/725.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: 15 minute video on how to make Hexayurts for Burning Man, video, 2012-05-04, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [339], https://guptaoption.com/texts/339.md.

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

## Passages
[0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=0s) [Music] hi I'm Lindsay Darby and this is a heier um it is a refugee shelter that was designed by Mr V Gupta who I have with me here hello and welcome to the what how and why of he yards I'm Vinay Gupta of the hexayurt project and Progressive Building Solutions this is the hexayurt that we built anthon Village in 2006 it's actually two hexayurts joined together and you saw a little clip of the interior and exterior of the building at the beginning the hexayurt itself is a refugee

[0:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=40s) shelter which is designed uh specifically for Desert environments although it can be adapted for others so it's got a lot of benefits for Burning Man such as it's very cool in the

[0:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=49s) daytime it's very resistant to dust storms and it's also warm at night which is kind of a nice touch for refugees um

[0:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=57s) refugees have all the same basic survival needs that anybody does it's just that they're often in relatively rugged areas for 10 or 20 years of their lives sometimes longer so there's a real need for the shelters that they're provided with to last a long time and to be relatively comfortable because this is you know big chunk of these people's lives this is the basic hexayurt and you can see it's made from 12 sheets of a standard board material uh six are used for the wall and six more are cut in half for the roof cone it's a very simple design and there are a bunch of different sizes you can make them in some smaller some larger there are six steps to building a hexayurt for Burning Man this year uh Source the materials cut and tape the panels do a dry run at home transport your hexayurt to the pla assemble it on site and then take it home and store it for reuse next year we'll go through

[1:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=113s) those steps one by one in a minute in terms of the uh time and money required to do this it's going to cost about $500 about a day of time to prepare at home and then on the pla it's going to take a team of three or four people an hour or two to put together and that I mean it's a significant investment time and effort but it is totally worth it because once you get to the pla you come home to something like this rather than to a tent and it it's great it's a little house and it's cool in the daytime and you can sleep and yeah it's quite nice you can see around the back we've got fly Tech Furniture I think that's a bench maybe uh you can see there's this nice Archway I think that was designed by Ranger Dyan so yeah it's a good thing to do so let's run through the steps uh

[2:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=155s) starting with the materials this is the material we used to use it's called tar and we don't recommend you use it anymore because it's not really it's fire performance is a little shady so if you're going to build a hexayurt find something that is strong appropriate to build with and has good fire performance and is otherwise you know safe and appropriate um candid materials you might want to look at honeycomb cardboard um thermax HD which is a lot like tougher but is much heavier and much stronger and it is really quite a good material and um if you go to the main website hear.com there should be a link to some discretion groups where people are talking about the materials they want to use um this is the tape that we use you can see it's uh quite broad that's actually 6 in and it's got reinforcing filaments that run in both directions it's called biral filament tape that one is uh very close to a material called 3M 8959 which is a really good tape but is very expensive you can find tapes which work pretty much the same way for about $30 a row if you do want to use a 3-in tape which you can pick up at places like Office Depot um you have to tape the building very carefully you have to put in all 12 tape anchors and you have to be very precise you can make it work but in general I recommend 6in tape other things you're going to need

[3:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=237s) tarp for the floor tent pegs all kinds of other bits and pieces that you know something to keep the door closed um check on the website for a complete list okay Second Step taping the panels

[4:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=248s) um when you're cutting the panels it's basically a straight diagonal C across the board again you can see plans online and depending on what you're working if you're going to use a craft knife or a saw um don't cut panels on the plier

[4:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=263s) it's a very mopy activity you don't want to do that so take keeping the panel

[4:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=269s) edges is also something that's done partly for Loop control and also to protect the panels uh against water and to give them little additional strength here's what you wind up with once you've taped all your panel edges this is a ready to go hexayurt so do a

[4:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=292s) dry run it's very important to do this before you get to the plia so that you've got a sense of what you're doing when you're doing the dry run you can

[5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=300s) actually skip some steps to make the assembly faster transport to the pla um the

[5:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=304s) biggest thing to remember is that roof racks are really hard on panels the combination of wind stresses and vibration tends to be pretty tough on the materials you also might want to use a sheet of plywood above and below the hexayurt package um so strapped together to protect the hexayurt panels from bike pedals or your Dome poles and this kind of thing quite

[5:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=328s) important okay assembly on site we're going to show you some videos here that go through the process but first let's just identify the parts of the hexayurt uh the roof cone is the piece you build first then you put the walls together and you lift the roof cone onto the walls the tape anchors which actually hold the building onto the ground are built as part of the roof cone process and the strap of tape that attaches the walls to the roof is called the tension ring and that's really what gives the building its structural Integrity um the way the building build is arranged most of the primary loads that actually hold the building together are carried by the tape and not the panels and that's part of the reason that the hexayurt is so strong um it does take a bit of skill to do the full assembly I mean it's not a difficult process but it's definitely something that you're going to learn ideally from another person it's good to see it done you know up close a time or two and here's just putting one together in again 2006 so let's take a look at the process

[6:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=386s) of making the roof code and there's another couple of video CS behind this so the older way of tape making tape anchors works if you don't have the plastic pipe which is you fold the tape over onto itself like this once then twice and what that does is you've got this is exterior so it's not sticky it's fold it over you fold it over a second time then fold it and what it creates is this pocket this tube that goes all the way across the thickness of the tape but isn't sticky on the inside and that's what you would put the Rope through uh the reason we use the plastic pipes is because if you just do that um what you can get is point loading at the edge of the tape so the Rope will tear through the tape a line at a time so it's better to actually make a proper anchor with the pipe but if you don't have it it still works and then then we stick this Sticky Side to Sticky Side then up over the anchor and down the other side and that's what stops this from unrolling under lad just pop a little plastic tube through and when the time comes when we actually guide a building down the Rope just goes through here down to the tent Peg like that so that becomes what sits at the base of the building and then the tape goes all the way up over the peak and then down the other side and that's where it gets its structural strength from okay second try and get that lump out if you can yeah very good

[8:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=518s) now um finishing the roof cone is a slightly different process to assembling the other parts of the roof cone because when you're putting most of the roof cone together you stand in the position where you're going to put the panel after the one you're working on so you sort of work your way around the roof cone uh until you get to the last panel and for the last panel there's no place to stand in order to put the tape onto the panel panel properly so you have to use a different technique for the last one so keep it very T and high got to pull tight very tight that's it that's it more to this side okay and lift a little okay okay to tight very top okay and uh down there we go once the roof cone is actually on top of

[9:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=570s) the um walls then you tape it [Music] are by having people yeah that's uh at the same issue it's a TW story hexayurt Earth coming together the Pentagon demonstration hold it right there we need a photo wait go back we missed it it right there we need a photo two sheets stacked horizontally it'll give us 8T Wall height standing room wall the [Music] wall there are lots of other little tricks that make this go smoothly so it's worth watching the long videos that really go through the process in detail so for the final step take your

[10:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=658s) hexayurt at home and reuse it next year if you build with good strong materials and you don't take it down too roughly I think you should be able to get many years of use out of your hexayurt one more thing the folding hexayurt is a commercial

[11:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7pzfUH9oA&t=672s) addition of the hexayurt that's being built by Progressive Building Solutions the hope is that we're going to be able to distribute these to uh non-governmental organizations and disaster relief agencies like FEMA uh State femas and also to burners so um I want to show you some footage of a pre-production prototype at University of einhoven and um then we can talk a little more about how this works you can see that the roof cone comes as a single pre-taped package and you just kind of pop it open and then you follow the rest of the same assembly steps that you do with the hex where you lift it onto the walls tape it in place and then anchor it we're hoping that you'll be able to pick up units close to or even on the pli the preproduction ction prototype takes about 5 minutes to put up um maybe 10 if you count the time it takes to actually get it tied down if you'd like more information Progressive buildings solutions.com is the website or you can send email to Justin GZA aol.com Justin GZA aol.com so I'd like to say thank you very much to everybody who shot the footage that we used for this video and uh finally if you're interested in building a small hexayurt to get a sense of how the system works Google for Wood's pup hexayurt which is a very simple way of making a scale model of a hexayurt out of a single sheet of uh just about any material costs about $10 or $20 to do and it gives you real sounds of how the building system works and how the pieces fit together and just what the hex is so it's a great place to start if you think of you might want to build one for this year start with one of Woody's pup hexayurts and then when you get to the P you can use it to keep your coolers cool take care and thank you very much

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End of [339] 15 minute video on how to make Hexayurts for Burning Man. 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, [310](https://guptaoption.com/texts/310.md) Engineers Without Borders Sheffield Plywood Hexayurt How To (2015); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.