# Superstruct and Urgent Evoke: research note > One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [844]. 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-superstruct-and-urgent-evoke-research-note. 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): Provenance for the fiction strand that leads to Harappa. - Career works it belongs to: - Superstruct and URGENT EVOKE (2008): The Hexayurt in two of Jane McGonigal's games: in Superstruct (2008) he wrote DCAR, a refugee state housed... (suggested by machine) - Free science and engineering in the global public interest (2009): Talk deck: poverty causes a quarter to a half of 60 million deaths a year, and open source hardware gets... (suggested by machine) - Hexayurt Refugee Shelter (MICA, Baltimore) (2024): A lecture and a roundtable with Bryan Hellard at the Maryland Institute College of Art: cities instead of... (suggested by machine) - Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of: - CheapID to Mattereum: One identity pattern, from a person's ID card in 2006 to warranties on physical goods in 2017. (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) - standard SKUs: A survival kit built only from standard, mass-produced parts. (through a work suggested by machine) - Topics: Hexayurt shelter design & project — hexayurt, hexayurt project, project (100%) - Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: Superstruct (27 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2010); Urgent Evoke (17 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2026); DCAR (17 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2008); Possible Worlds (7 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2015); urban resilience (8 here; 8 sources in all, earliest dated 2011); Jane McGonigal (3 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2026); Hexayurt Project (20 here; 70 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 4 undated); The Living City (4 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2009); hexayurt village (3 here; 3 sources in all, earliest dated 2002); The Unplugged (4 here; 7 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 1 undated) - Importance: core-text score 0.17 (1.00 is the top), number 397 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation - On the same works, just before: [247] [Hexayurt Interviews Hexayurt Footage From The... (2020)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/247.md); [727] [Undergraduate Lecture Series 2024: Vinay Gupta & Bryan... (2024)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/727.md); [724] [Roundtable Discussion with Vinay Gupta and Bryan... (2024)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/724.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: Superstruct and Urgent Evoke: research note, document, 2026-11, https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-superstruct-and-urgent-evoke-research-note; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [844], https://guptaoption.com/texts/844.md. ## Passages [p. 1](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-superstruct-and-urgent-evoke-research-note) Shelter for 300 million · Research note Superstruct and Urgent Evoke: research note The sources, dates and gaps behind the summary Superstruct and Urgent Evoke Compiled 9 November 2026. Both game sites are dead, so most of what follows comes from Wayback Machine captures. Dates are given as printed where a page prints one; where a date comes from an address, a revision history or file metadata, the note says so. Quotations are checked word for word. Findings Superstruct (2008) and Urgent Evoke (2010) are two separate games, both directed by Jane McGonigal. In Superstruct, Vinay Gupta was a player who wrote the Hexayurt and DCAR, a refugee state, into the game's world under the name The Gupta Option. In Urgent Evoke, the game's own episode 7 featured the Hexayurt Project, Gupta posted from the Hexayurt Project, and the game named Gupta a mentor. One page of the episode 7 comic survives in Gupta's own files, and the blip.tv videos once thought lost survive as rescued copies on files.howtolivewiki.com. Evoke 2 (EQUIPE-EVOKE, Brazil, 2012) shows no Hexayurt or Gupta link in what is archived. 1. Superstruct, 2008 Superstruct was the Institute for the Future's forecasting game, created by Jane McGonigal and set in 2019; Wikipedia, citing Engadget, says it launched on 6 October 2008 and ran for six weeks. The Gupta Option was introduced on Gupta's blog, then called The Bucky-Gandhi Design Institution, as the result of five years of a one-man think tank in the spirit of Buckminster Fuller. The game wiki's revision history shows the account "Vinay Gupta" creating pages from 4 to 7 October 2008 and editing until 13 October: the Hexayurt; DCAR, “the refugee state”, which imagines refugee-run Hexayurt factories exporting houses; and CheapID, WSLE (weakly state-like entity), seasteads, algal turf scrubbers and high-intensity agriculture. Verbatim, from the Hexayurt page: “DCAR the refugee state houses much of its population in hexayurts”. Source Date Where Blog post "Superstruct - The Gupta Option" Printed "Tuesday, Sep 23rd, Wayback, 27 September 2008 2008" Blog post "Superstruct report from DCAR, the Not read from the page Wayback, 6 January 2009 refugee state" Superstruct wiki: Hexayurt, DCAR, User:Vinay Gupta 4 to 13 October 2008 (revision Hexayurt, DCAR, user page (live on Fandom) and others history) Tumblr "The Gupta Option 2019", 12 in-game posts, 4 October to 14 November live; Wayback archive page (every post including the Hexayurt story "Reminiscences" 2008 captured, December 2008 and August 2011) Game page: "The Hexayurt Project - Free Shelter, Captured 11 December 2008 Wayback Agriculture and Infrastructure Technologies", founder Hexayurt Project Game page: "The Refugee State: Support the Captured 1 January 2009 Wayback Democratic Central African Republic (DCAR) Abroad!" Game pages: "The Unplugged", SERAA, and the Captured October 2008 to The Unplugged, SERAA, profile player profile "Hexayurt Project", which opens “Hi. January 2009 I'm Vinay Gupta.” hexayurt.com/superstruct, "The Gupta Option - Captured 22 October 2008 Wayback; live Superstruct" Video: "Superstruct Report 1", the first DCAR field Uploaded 4 October 2008 YouTube; blip.tv copy report, 3 min [p. 1 to 2](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-superstruct-and-urgent-evoke-research-note) Republic (DCAR) Abroad!" Game pages: "The Unplugged", SERAA, and the Captured October 2008 to The Unplugged, SERAA, profile player profile "Hexayurt Project", which opens “Hi. January 2009 I'm Vinay Gupta.” hexayurt.com/superstruct, "The Gupta Option - Captured 22 October 2008 Wayback; live Superstruct" Video: "Superstruct Report 1", the first DCAR field Uploaded 4 October 2008 YouTube; blip.tv copy report, 3 min 30 s Video: "Superstruct Communications Intercept 1 - Uploaded 11 November 2008 YouTube DCAR", 84 s Video: "Superstruct Report 2 - DCAR at WAR", the full Listed 12 November 2008; blip.tv copy DCAR report, 29 min 40 s embedded in the tumblr post "What really went down in DCAR", 13 November 2008 (blog time) Video: "Six Ways To Die - Hexayurt Project briefing, Uploaded 21 September 2008; Vimeo Reykjavik", used in the tumblr's "Superstruct Report 2 tumblr post 7 October 2008 - Teaching SERAA Mapping in Reykjavik" The game's own video "Superstruct Superthreat: Generation Exile" (YouTube, uploaded 21 September 2008) also survives. 2. Urgent Evoke, 2010 Urgent Evoke was the World Bank Institute's game on social innovation, directed by Jane McGonigal, with ten weekly missions each opened by a graphic novel episode. Its run, 3 March to 12 May 2010, is taken from Wikipedia and the Evoke blog; a World Bank brief says it ran "from February through May". The game sites, urgentevoke.com and blog.urgentevoke.net, are dead; all fourteen pages of the Wayback index for urgentevoke.com were searched by address for Hexayurt, Gupta, shelter, refugee and Haiti. Mentor The Evoke blog post "Mentors bring IK, Hexayurts, Digital Culture, and Youth Employment", by Robert Hawkins, Evoke's executive producer at the World Bank, welcomes four new mentors, among them “Vinay Gupta of the Hexayurt Project (see EVOKE episode 7)”. It prints "Posted by Robert Hawkins on 29 Apr"; the year 2010 is in the address. Wayback, 4 May 2010 Episode 7, Urban Resilience The mission list gives mission 7 as "URGENT EVOKE: Urban Resilience". The game's "Investigate Episode Seven" post, written in character as Alchemy ("Posted by Alchemy on 14 Apr"), lists 17 secrets of the episode: Los Angeles fire weather, Ushahidi, the vehicles in the story, Alejandro Aravena (13), Elemental houses (14), “How do hexayurts work?” (15, linked to hexayurt.com), urban resilience (16) and its relationship to sustainability (17). investigation file (no 2010 capture; this one is from 2015), mission brief, 17 April 2010, mission list Four posts from the Hexayurt Project, 16 April 2010 The profile "Vinay Gupta (Hexayurt Project)", London, had welcome comments from 22 February 2010, before the public launch, and lists four posts dated 16 April 2010 (profile, Wayback, 18 April 2010): Post What it holds Urgent Evoke - Mission 7 - Quick Resilience Briefing A blip.tv video on “our work on open source emergency housing”. Its rescued copy, "Urgent Evoke - Urban Resilience", 2 min 42 s, is on the file server. Urgent Evoke - Mission 7 - about the Hexayurt Project Says the comic features the Hexayurt Project, which “exists here and now”: “The shelters [p. 2 to 3](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-superstruct-and-urgent-evoke-research-note) Evoke - Mission 7 - Quick Resilience Briefing A blip.tv video on “our work on open source emergency housing”. Its rescued copy, "Urgent Evoke - Urban Resilience", 2 min 42 s, is on the file server. Urgent Evoke - Mission 7 - about the Hexayurt Project Says the comic features the Hexayurt Project, which “exists here and now”: “The shelters are a little less sophisticated than the ones in the comic”. The Living City - 21st century Urban Resilience The slides of The Living City, a co-presented 2009 talk on urban resilience to Arup. Recordings: YouTube, 2012, YouTube, 2021, and a blip.tv copy of 14 April 2010. Dealing in Security - functional maps of urban resilience Dealing in Security, offered as a toolkit for the mission. The post page itself was not captured; its title, date and link are on the profile. Players Josh Judkins, "IMAGINE 1: Fabricating the Future in 2020", 15 February 2010: a climate-refugee camp in Queensland. “In every direction are tents and Hexayurt shelters” (Wayback) Megiddo Tell, "Secrets", 12 March 2010, tagged "hexayurt": Hexayurts for Haiti, built by local workers trained to train others. “Enter the Hexayurt.” (Wayback, 15 March 2010) Evoke 2 Evoke 2 is EQUIPE-EVOKE (Brazil, 2012), which a World Bank brief says is “sometimes referred to as 'season two'”. Its archived About page credits show no Gupta, and no Hexayurt link was found in its archived pages, though its mission and evidence pages are mostly not captured. (About page, Wayback, 17 July 2013) 3. The surviving comic page One page of the episode 7 comic survives, supplied by Vinay Gupta on 9 November 2026 as an image and inside an undated Hexayurt Project proposal, "The Hexayurt Project and Possible Worlds". It shows children hearing about Aravena's Elemental houses, a man in front of a Hexayurt saying Hexayurts are now standard relief gear, and a Hexayurt village. Verbatim, lettered in capitals: “Hexayurts are standard disaster relief gear today, but it took years of safety reviews”. The page prints no episode number, page number or credit. Four checks place it in episode 7: Format. A 674 by 1065 pixel PNG with an 8-bit palette, the same as the archived episode 3 page EvokeEP3_02.png. Style. The same hand lettering, bold italic emphasis, panel borders and coloring as that page. Content. It covers four of the five subjects of the episode 7 secrets 13 to 17: Aravena, Elemental houses, Hexayurts and sustainability. Placement. The proposal prints it beside its paragraph on Urgent Evoke. The comic was hosted at urgentevokeapp.com/comics/e7.html; the only capture of that address (2021) is a parking page, and the Wayback Machine holds comic page images only for episodes 1 to 3. The Possible Worlds proposal The proposal offers four activities to an unnamed host: a short presentation, "The future of the village"; cardstock model worksheets for children; a public build of a cardboard Hexayurt village; and "Future Re-enactment: climate refugees", actors in two large Hexayurts with a projected video wall, which the comic page [p. 3 to 4](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-superstruct-and-urgent-evoke-research-note) images only for episodes 1 to 3. The Possible Worlds proposal The proposal offers four activities to an unnamed host: a short presentation, "The future of the village"; cardstock model worksheets for children; a public build of a cardboard Hexayurt village; and "Future Re-enactment: climate refugees", actors in two large Hexayurts with a projected video wall, which the comic page illustrates. It says the Hexayurt Project took part heavily in the Superstruct and Urgent Evoke games “in both player and mentor roles”, and: “The hexayurt was featured as a key scenario element in Urgent Evoke.” Date. None printed. It speaks of 2012 in the past; its file metadata says it was created on 21 March 2013. Likely recipient, unconfirmed. Nesta's possible worlds event: Pat Kane, “Nesta's Lead Curator for the event on possible worlds”, announced a year of talks leading to a two-day event at the Old Truman Brewery, London, on 28 to 29 September 2013 (Nesta, Playing the future). Delivered? A 13 min 47 s phone recording, "futurefest, vinay gupta, future of the village", is on the file server, so the talk was probably given at a FutureFest. Its year is not in the file name. 4. What survives and what is lost Item Status Superstruct wiki pages Live on Fandom Superstruct tumblr, 12 posts Live, and every post in the Wayback Machine Superstruct Report 1; Communications Intercept 1 Live on YouTube; Report 1 also as a blip.tv copy Full DCAR report, "DCAR at WAR" Survives as a rescued blip.tv copy on files.howtolivewiki.com Superstruct game site pages Gone from the live web; kept in the Wayback Machine Superstruct Facebook threads, "Superthreat Backgrounder Lost. Only redirects and error pages were captured. on the Gupta Option" and "Tech notes for DCAR" Urgent Evoke profile, posts, missions and blog Sites dead; kept in the Wayback Machine, with the gaps below Mission 7 video briefing Survives as a rescued blip.tv copy on files.howtolivewiki.com Episode 7 comic Lost apart from one page, in Gupta's own files The Living City; Dealing in Security Live The rescued blip.tv copies sit in files.howtolivewiki.com/blip_tv_refugees/, 124 videos with a saved copy of blip.tv's own download list, which gives each title and date. The copies are matched to the 2008 and 2010 posts by title, date and length; blip.tv player ids cannot be tied to file names directly. They were not watched. 5. Gaps Only one page of the episode 7 comic has been seen. Where its image was first saved from, and how the rest of the episode names the Hexayurt Project, is not recorded. No source says Gupta helped write or advise episode 7. The record shows the episode featured the Hexayurt Project and that Gupta then posted and became a mentor. What the mentoring involved is unrecorded: no source names the players or teams Gupta mentored. The rescued videos and the FutureFest recording were not watched or heard, so their content is unconfirmed. The Possible Worlds proposal names no recipient and prints no date; whether its other [p. 3 to 4](https://guptaoption.com/#doc=vinay-gupta-superstruct-and-urgent-evoke-research-note) episode featured the Hexayurt Project and that Gupta then posted and became a mentor. What the mentoring involved is unrecorded: no source names the players or teams Gupta mentored. The rescued videos and the FutureFest recording were not watched or heard, so their content is unconfirmed. The Possible Worlds proposal names no recipient and prints no date; whether its other three activities happened is not on record. The Living City: Gupta's 2012 YouTube title says "Arup - London November 2009", and the April 2010 blip.tv title says "to Arup NY". The record does not settle which. The Wayback index search covered addresses, not page text, so a player post that mentions the Hexayurt without the word in its title or tags may be missed. Two of the four posts have no capture of their own page from 2010. Some dates come from addresses, revision histories or file metadata rather than print: the Evoke blog prints day and month only, and the Superstruct dates are wiki revision times and Wayback capture dates. Compiled 9 November 2026 from Wayback Machine captures, live pages, the files.howtolivewiki.com server and files supplied by Vinay Gupta. Companion to Superstruct and Urgent Evoke. --- End of [844] Superstruct and Urgent Evoke: research note. 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.