# Shelter for 300 million: the Hexayurt and the plan behind it > One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [842]. 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/.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages. ## Where this source sits - Source: document (PDF), 2026-11 (printed on it), https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-shelter-for-300-million. Text: document text - On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the great powers step (Multipolar Realpolitik, 2024), the latest step. - Made from his records (a summary), not his own text: cite the works it points to. - How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Current summary of the physical layer of the plan at the 300-million scale. - Career works it belongs to: - Hexayurt (2002): A public-domain disaster shelter made from whole 4x8 building panels with one diagonal cut. (suggested by machine) - Hexayurt Country (2010): Plan to rehouse Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake in Hexayurts, financed with the money that would... (suggested by machine) - One Network, One World: Designing for a 7+ Billion Person World (2013): Talk at the OHM2013 hacker camp: housing everyone at one planet's worth of consumption, and why... (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) - Ideas developed here: 30-year plan (Hexayurt; target revised upward, now 300 million) - Topics: Hexayurt shelter design & project — hexayurt, hexayurt project, project (60%); Global Village Development Bank — village infrastructure & development finance (20%); SCIM / Six Ways To Die — layered critical-infrastructure mapping (20%) - Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: Hexacloak (6 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2026, 1 undated); Dealing in Security (5 here; 13 sources in all, earliest dated 2009, 4 undated); Haiti (10 here; 42 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 3 undated); feasibility analysis (3 here; 5 sources in all, earliest dated 2026, 1 undated); Hexayurt in Haiti (3 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2002); Quaddome (3 here; 8 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 1 undated); First build (2 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2010); mass evacuation (3 here; 11 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 1 undated); Kit (5 here; 29 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 2 undated); Lean Green Mattereum (2 here; 5 sources in all, earliest dated 2026) - The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): Hexacloak; Shelter for 300 million; Hexacoat - Importance: core-text score 0.26 (1.00 is the top), number 302 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation - On the same works, just before: [671] [‘Expensive and Uncertain: The Markets Where Mattereum... (2022)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/671.md); [727] [Undergraduate Lecture Series 2024: Vinay Gupta & Bryan... (2024)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/727.md); [511] [$20-50tr in the Next 5-10 Years (2025)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/511.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: Shelter for 300 million: the Hexayurt and the plan behind it, document, 2026-11, https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-shelter-for-300-million; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [842], https://guptaoption.com/texts/842.md. ## Passages [p. 1 to 2](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-shelter-for-300-million) Shelter for 300 million The Hexayurt, and the plan behind it A family of buildings anyone can make from standard panels, the map of needs around them, and what it would take to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants November 2026 · Draft for review. Quotations are his own words, linked to archived copies; the rest is our summary, prepared with him. Hexayurts at Burning Man, 2010, where the design has been built and tested for two decades. Photo: Xephro, public domain (CC0), Wikimedia Commons. In brief In 2002 Vinay Gupta designed the Hexayurt, a flat-pack shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, and gave it to the public domain. Behind it sat a thirty-year plan: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million people displaced by climate change, which he has put at about thirty cities the size of New York. The hardware is ready and cheap. At the prices in his published plans, shelter, clothing and a household kit for 300 million people come to roughly $17 billion to $72 billion. What has held the plan back is everything around the hardware: who pays, who carries the risk, who may settle where, and how a displaced family proves who it is. This guide shows the buildings and the map of needs they serve, then why the humanitarian system has not adopted them and the first step that could change that. The job, in numbers For 300 million people Estimate Basis, from his published plans Hexayurts 60 to 100 million One unit houses a family of up to five (2007); three per unit in his 2013 talk Panels 0.72 to 1.2 billion sheets 12 standard 4 by 8 foot sheets per classic Hexayurt Shelter $12 to $60 billion About $200 for a basic temporary unit to about $600 for a durable one (2007) Household kit $3 to $10 billion Water, sanitation, smoke-free cooking and light: under $100 a household (2010) Clothing $1.5 billion About $5 per Hexacloak in a refugee setting (2023) Figures from the feasibility analysis that accompanies this guide, which works them out from his plans of 2006 to 2023. Prices are as published and not adjusted for inflation. The Hexayurt The classic Hexayurt is twelve standard 4 by 8 foot panels, six of them cut once on the diagonal, which make about 166 square feet of floor: six walls and a shallow roof cone. The panels can be insulation board, plywood, OSB, sandwich panels or even cardboard, and every size in the family follows one rule: “All use whole sheets of materials and straight cuts” (The Hexayurt in Haiti, 2010, p5). No factory is needed. Appropedia puts assembly at about an hour for a team of three; the 2007 evacuation plan allows about two hours for a first build, “and more like one hour with an experienced team of five or six” (mass evacuation plan, 2007). Because the design is public domain, anyone may make and improve it: “Can be mass produced without [p. 2 to 3](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-shelter-for-300-million) is needed. Appropedia puts assembly at about an hour for a team of three; the 2007 evacuation plan allows about two hours for a first build, “and more like one hour with an experienced team of five or six” (mass evacuation plan, 2007). Because the design is public domain, anyone may make and improve it: “Can be mass produced without any copyright Raising a plywood Hexayurt: the cover photo of his or patent licence: the design is fully public domain.” (Lean Green Mattereum, 2010 proposal The Hexayurt in Haiti? 2020, p64) 12 166 sq ft about $200 0 standard 4 by 8 foot panels in of floor, for a family of up to in materials for a basic patents or licence fees: public the classic design five temporary unit (2007) domain since 2002 The family of sizes, from the small classic to stretched and taller versions, every one cut from whole sheets. The Hexayurt in Haiti (2010), p5. Built to keep a body safe His design studies start from what a building is for: “The primary function of a building is to maintain the body temperature of the people inside at a safe and comfortable level.” (design study, 2008). Insulated panels, shade and ventilation do that work without power. Proven in use First built at Burning Man in 2003, it spread there quickly: about 1,000 were built in 2012, his 2013 talk reported test units in Sri Lanka and Haiti, and by his 2020 count “Hexayurts spread over Burning Man: 20% or so of 70,000 people.” (Lean Green Mattereum, p56). In 2019 ShiftPod, a fabric derivative, gave the first test with refugees. “A hexayurt is a hundred bucks of plywood and some screws.” (Hexayurt Country, 2010) How it stays cool in hot, dry climates: about 10C cooler inside than outside in dry bulb tests. Design study (2008), p5. A family of designs The Quaddome: a room for a group The Quaddome, designed by Edmund Harriss as one of the near-geodesic designs in the Hexayurt family, scales the rule up: every triangle is half a standard panel, cut once on the diagonal. Appropedia lists it at 30 sheets and 448 square feet. Morgan Engel's team built the first at Burning Man in 2011, cutting all thirty panels at home so that nothing had to be cut on site, and Gupta posted a built example in March 2026, about 14 feet in radius. Morgan Engel's Quaddome at Burning Man, 2011. Photo: Morgan Taping the sections together on the playa. Photo: Morgan Engel. Engel. The community has extended the classic design too: the H13 adds a full-height door, the H18 has 12-foot walls, the Camp Danger hinge cuts lifting the roof onto the walls to about ten minutes, and a 2023 pop-up version is made flat and opens in one motion. The Hexacloak: shelter you wear Clothing does the same job as a building: it keeps the body at a safe temperature. The Hexacloak (2023) applies the Hexayurt rule to cloth. A piece [p. 3 to 5](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-shelter-for-300-million) the Camp Danger hinge cuts lifting the roof onto the walls to about ten minutes, and a 2023 pop-up version is made flat and opens in one motion. The Hexacloak: shelter you wear Clothing does the same job as a building: it keeps the body at a safe temperature. The Hexacloak (2023) applies the Hexayurt rule to cloth. A piece of standard cloth at least 60 by 80 inches is draped over the shoulders, tied and pulled into a hood, with no sewing and no factory, for about $5 at $1 to $2 a yard. A doubled twist loop cannot tighten around the neck, and the ends can be tied with wool so they break under load. As he put the design problem, “we just needed to turn rolls of fabric into clothing” (in conversation, November 2026). The seven steps, from hexayurt.com. The Hexacoat of the same year is made in a factory; the cloak is the one with nothing to make. Photo: hexayurt.com. The household kit Shelter is one need among several. Course of Action (2006) names five actions that could save about a third of the people who die each year: stop smoking, drink purified water, cook without breathing smoke, use a sanitary toilet, and learn improved agriculture. Three are cheap public-domain hardware, water filters at around $10 and a toilet at about $40, and the kit adds solar light. His design studies sum up the approach: “driving whatever you need with whatever you have” (design study, 2008, p11). The map of needs A settlement has to provide more than roofs. His needs map starts from how people die: “There are six basic ways in which people die, and three sets of essential services which protect them.” (Dealing in Security, 2010, p3). Too hot, too cold, hunger, thirst, illness and injury become, in his Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps, 18 needs across 7 scales, from one person to the whole world. An empty cell is a gap a disaster will find. A simple critical infrastructure map: one person at the center, the How the grid works: needs across the top, scales from the individual to services that keep them alive in rings around. From the cover of Dealing the world down the side, and what goes in each cell. Dealing in in Security (2010). Security, p10. The grid filled in for a typical developed nation, with the axes switched: each need traced from the household to the world, from toilets and water mains through the local grid and fuel imports to rule of law, land registries and international recognition. Dealing in Security, p11. “Infrastructure is a public health system.” (Dealing in Security, p4) STAR-TIDES at the US National Defense University used the six ways as its frame for supporting stressed populations (2008 to 2009). A settlement plan built on the map asks, cell by cell, who supplies each need at each scale, and what happens when that supplier fails. Settlements A million homes in three days Haiti, 2010: count [p. 4 to 6](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-shelter-for-300-million) (Dealing in Security, p4) STAR-TIDES at the US National Defense University used the six ways as its frame for supporting stressed populations (2008 to 2009). A settlement plan built on the map asks, cell by cell, who supplies each need at each scale, and what happens when that supplier fails. Settlements A million homes in three days Haiti, 2010: count first His 2007 mass evacuation plan treats sheltering a After the earthquake, around a million people in Haiti were displaced population as a supply and training problem: homeless or in relief tents. His plans began with counting: “Building and siting one million units in three days is “count the dead, name them, and enquire what they died achievable”, at under $700 million, given preparation. The of”, and costed shelter and basic utilities at about $60 a units become guest quarters added to host families' head for a million people. On tents: “Relief tents are a lie: homes, “to be added to existing family homes that provide they last for a year.” (Hexayurt Country, 2010) hospitality and infrastructure” (2007). The bill of materials for a plywood Hexayurt, $280 per unit at US prices, scaled to rehouse 750,000 people in Haiti: about $47 million, or $21 a person a year over three years. Labor and logistics are not included. Hexayurts for Haiti cost spreadsheet (2010). Cities, not camps In a 2019 talk he argued for building new cities rather than camps, about thirty the size of New York for 300 million people (Stamps School talk, from 22:07). The standard he set in 2013 is a family living at one planet's worth of consumption in relative comfort. Each settlement is planned with the same map: one household at the center, then the neighborhood, the town and the region, with every ring asked how it keeps people from dying of heat, cold, hunger, thirst, illness and injury. The individual's map, framed by the six ways people die. Dealing in Security (2010), p2. Why it has not happened, and the first step A doom loop, not a design problem In his view, the reason “the global humanitarian system has not used the hexayurt or similar solutions at scale” is that the system is a doom loop, “along with the climate processes like COP” (in conversation, 2026). He expected a long wait from the start: “Humanitarian innovation is glacially slow, the relief tent has changed little in sixty years”, and he planned for “15 years from inventing the shelter to an NGO making a mass deployment”, naming the causes as “non-innovating cultures, fear of absorbing risk and similar factors.” (Course of Action, 2006, p2) Disaster response is run by committees of government agencies, aid organizations, local partners, utilities and the host country, each with its own goals: what he calls a goat rodeo. Deaths go uncounted, tents wear out within a year, and the money answers to donors rather than to the people being housed. His approach Count. Record what people die of, settlement by settlement, [p. 6](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-shelter-for-300-million) is run by committees of government agencies, aid organizations, local partners, utilities and the host country, each with its own goals: what he calls a goat rodeo. Deaths go uncounted, tents wear out within a year, and the money answers to donors rather than to the people being housed. His approach Count. Record what people die of, settlement by settlement, and map each settlement's needs before it is built. Let the money answer to the families. Households repay in small installments, and the payment record becomes their identity and credit history, disclosed only by court order, as in his CheapID design. Warrant the supplies. Every batch of panels, filters and toilets carries a record of what it is and how it performs, backed by someone liable, as in Mattereum's Asset Passports. Build the court first. Set up a way to settle disputes before the first family arrives. Keep the governing body narrow. “permit only a single class of player to participate, or fix the goal and bar those with alternative objectives.” (Of Warlords and Rodeos, 2015, p7) Plan each settlement as the start of a city. Where each layer stands Layer Status What exists, and what holds it back Shelter and clothing Proven The Hexayurt family and the Hexacloak; held back by institutional adoption Household kit and needs map Parts proven Filters, toilets, stoves, solar light, the 18-need map; localization and training Settlement and city Planned The evacuation, Haiti and STAR-TIDES plans; land, permits, water and work Identity and finance Specified CheapID and a development bank made of agreements; state recognition and investor rules Ledger, warranties and courts Shipped Ethereum, Mattereum's Asset Passports, the UK's digital dispute rules; cost of a claim on cheap goods Agreements between states Argued Multipolar Realpolitik (2024); politics Status labels are our assessment, from the feasibility analysis. The first step One settlement that does everything at once: losses counted, supplies warranted, financed as one class of identical projects, run by one kind of organization, with its own dispute process. It would produce the performance and loss data that lenders and insurers need, and show that rehousing at this scale can learn as it grows. The pressure is rising: his 2025 review of climate science warns that without intervention “The alternative is mass starvation.” (Climate Projections 2, 2025) Draft for review, November 2026. A summary of Vinay Gupta's shelter work, prepared with him; it is our summary, not his own statement. Quotations are his words and link to archived copies at guptaoption.com where possible; the 2019 talk is paraphrased with a link to the moment cited. Costs are from his published plans of 2006 to 2023, not adjusted for inflation. Photographs are credited in their captions. Companion documents: the full feasibility analysis of rehousing 300 million people, and Rich data capitalism, on the finance, warranty and legal layers. --- End of [842] Shelter for 300 million: the Hexayurt and the plan behind it. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt. Read next: his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.