YURTS ... NEW

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SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STRUCTURE

Educationally this building is significant because its design provides people with the opportunity to build something large and important for which they previously have had neither the opportunity nor the experience. The concept of simple structural beauty as a part of the environment is an important one. It gives great satisfaction to participants to find that they can make useful structures that are esthetically pleasing as well.

T he design of this contemporary yurt is the result of ten years' effort to develop techniques that make it possible for children and unskilled adults to participate in a major way in the creation of their own shelter. Taking part in the ordering of an environment means having a better chance of understanding and appreciating that environment. The construction of a yurt allows a person to see the total erection of a building in two or three days' time—(so quickly as to seem like time lapse photography). To see the same thing happen with a normal building in our society takes months and is beyond the attention span of many. Speed of construction also gives more people a feeling of accomplishment before they reach their threshold of discouragement and provides permanent shelter in the shortest possible time.

Yurts of this design have had a wide appeal and, in addition to their use in schools at the present time, they are in service as summer homes on the coast of Maine and Cape Cod; as a mountain shelter, a home, a research station, and as student housing in Alaska; as a home in British Columbia; and as a retreat in a Hawaiian mental hospital. As this is written, a yurt is being built as a sharecropper home in Mississippi, with the aid of students from the Study-Travel-Community School. It's a good project for these students since it is initially attractive and exciting to them while, at the same time, it demands cooperation, creativity and disciplined action.

HOW TO ORDER PLANS FOR THE COPERTHWAITE YURT

The Study-Travel-Community School did it... other groups and individuals are too . . . and so can you. Build your very own yurt or yurts and move right in, that is. All you'll need to tell you how is a $3.00 set of plans from Bill Coperthwaite.

It should be noted right in front, now, that your three Iron Men are not buying you reams of highly detailed drawings. Instead, you'll receive a single (23" X 33") sheet of heavy paper bearing—among other information—the following disclaimer:

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