GBA Logo horizontal Facebook LinkedIn Email Pinterest Twitter Instagram YouTube Icon Navigation Search Icon Main Search Icon Video Play Icon Plus Icon Minus Icon Picture icon Hamburger Icon Close Icon Sorted

Community and Q&A

Yurts

GBA Editor | Posted in Green Building Techniques on

William Coperthwaite is a teacher, builder, designer, and writer who for many years has explored the possibilities of true simplicity on a homestead on the north coast of Maine. In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau and Helen and Scott Nearing, Coperthwaite has fashioned a livelihood of integrity and completeness – buying almost nothing, providing for his own needs, and serving as a guide and companion to hundreds of apprentices drawn to his unique way of being.

Bill Coperthwaite doesn’t have email, doesn’t have a phone, and lives in the Maine woods a few miles from the nearest roads. His three-story yurt is reachable only by the sea, or by a half-hour hike along a woodland footpath bordered by bunchberry and sphagnum and hair cap moss. At nearly 80 years of age, he gets a daily workout chopping firewood, hauling supplies in his cedar canoe, pulling fir saplings from maple and birch glades and performing other regular chores.

Born in the northern Maine town of Monticello, Coperthwaite majored in art history at Bowdoin. He claimed conscientious objector status during the Korean War and later taught at the North Country School in Lake Placid, N.Y. and the Meeting School in Rindge, New Hampshire. Bill has a Ph.D. in education from Harvard, worked for two years in Mexico with the American Friends Service Committee, designed a traveling museum of Eskimo culture, and has lectured all over the world.

In 1962, while reading a National Geographic article, Bill recognized the folk genius in the design of the traditional Mongolian yurt. He found in the yurt both a rich potential for creative design and an opportunity for developing a simple dwelling that people could build themselves. Bill designed the tapered-wall wooden yurt to enable people to play a larger role in creating their own shelter, using a design that reduces required building skills to a minimum while still producing a beautiful, inexpensive and permanent shelter.

GBA Prime

Join the leading community of building science experts

Become a GBA Prime member and get instant access to the latest developments in green building, research, and reports from the field.

Replies

  1. Riversong | | #1

    The indigenous Mongolian design consisted of a collapsible circular trellis - picture an old accordion-style baby gate - that could be carried on camels and assembled in an hour. The wooden framework was set up in a circle and the doorway lashed into place. Willow poles were attached from the walls to a wooden ring at the apex, where a hole lets light in and woodsmoke out, all the way around. A tension band was then tightened around the entire structure at the eaves.

    The yurt was covered in multiple layers of thick felt made from beaten wet sheep wool. These moveable shelters are still being used much the same way today in the vast, semi-desert steppes stretching 5,000 miles from Turkey to China.

    The native genius, Coperthewaite says, lies in the Mongolian herdsmen's use of the tension band to take the outward thrust of the conical roof. The thick rope, made of yak or horsehair, eliminated the need for internal posts, rafters, lintels, headers and joists.

    "They could increase the space in their circular tents by raising them on a low wall, providing support by tying a rope around them," he notes in "A Handmade Life." "The structure, made of light poles fastened with felt and bound together with bands of woven wool, was a brilliant solution to the needs of that harsh region's people."

    Coperthwaite and his students modified the primitive yurt by making its walls flare out at the top and creating greater spaciousness within. Over the years, he has further adapted the ancient design for permanent habitation. He replaced the collapsible framework with solid tapered boards. The tension produced by the conical roof and outward sloping walls is contained by a steel band encircling the structure. Windows added under the eaves augment the natural lighting supplied by the central skylight. Coperthwaite aimed and still strives to design attractive, inexpensive dwellings that amateur builders can construct for themselves in a reasonable time frame and maintain at minimal cost.

    "My goal was to design this structure so that it could be built in stages to allow a family to start out with a very limited outlay of money, time, and energy, then expand the building as their resources grew," he writes. "I aimed at an initial budget of $3,000. This figure would permit many people to bypass a mortgage, avoiding the usurious rates of the money lenders as well as their veto power over the design and time frame."

  2. Riversong | | #2

    "The main thrust of my work is not simple living - not yurt design, not social change, although each of these is important and receives large blocks of my time," he reflects in his book. "But they are not central. My central concern is encouragement - encouraging people to seek, to experiment, to plan, to create and to dream. If enough people do this we will find a better way."

    "If living is to be right, it ought to be beautiful."

    "The more you have participated in making things around you, the more pleasurable it is. I think we have gotten away from that in our society."

  3. Riversong | | #3

    Traditional Yurts.

  4. Riversong | | #4

    Coperthwaite's Yurts.

  5. 2tePuaao2B | | #5

    Thanks for this Robert.

  6. John Hess | | #6

    I suppose if one wanted to know the ACH50 value or the R-value for yurts, then yurts wouldn't be the right building choice?

  7. Riversong | | #7

    I suppose if one wanted to know the ACH50 value or the R-value for yurts, then yurts wouldn't be the right building choice?

    No, one would be asking the wrong question.

    If the question were: "What simple shelter could serve the needs of people for thousands of years in both moderate and extreme climates, have minimal impact on the earth, and express the universal human need for aesthetics and comfort?" - then at least one of the best answers would be "The Yurt."

    History of the Yurt

    Yurts have been a distinctive feature of life in Central Asia for at least three thousand years. The first written description of a yurt used as a dwelling was recorded by Herodotus of Halicarnassus, who lived in Greece between 484 and 424 BC. Herodotus, who is regarded as the father of history, was the first person in the world to record an accurate account of the past. He described yurt-like tents as the dwelling place of the Scythians, a horse riding-nomadic nation who lived in the northern Black Sea and Central Asian region from around 600 BC to AD 300. Thus, the yurt was described in the first historical document in the world.

    Yurts have been continually in use since this time as habitation for the Mongolian nomadic peoples of the Central Asian Plateau. Archeological evidence proves that the first empire of steppe warriors in Central Asia, the Huns, who were active from the 4th to the 6th century AD, used yurts as their principal dwellings.

    The Italian merchant Marco Polo was the first Westerner to visit the Mongolian Empire in the 14th century. He wrote, “...They [the Mongols] have circular houses made of wood and covered with felt, which they carry about with them on four-wheeled wagons wherever they go. For the framework of rods is so neatly and skillfully constructed that it is light to carry. And every time they unfold their house and set it up, the door is always facing south.” This south-facing orientation is still prevalent today, there being obvious advantages to this for people living well north of the Equator.

    Yurts are still the most common type of habitation in Mongolia and even in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar (sometimes known as Ulan Bator) more than half the population lives in yurts.

    The traditional yurt walls were made of slats lashed together with leather thongs to form a collapsible trellis or lattice. The lattice was set up in a circle and the door frame was lashed into place. The crown or center ring was set on two posts in the center of the yurt. Roof poles connected to the crown and rested on the top of the lattice, all the way around. Finally, the entire lattice is bound by a tension rope. Covers for yurts in Mongolia were constructed of felt, beaten soft by rolling and kicking the wet sheep fleece. In cold climates, up to six layers were used for insulation.

    Yurts have been used in some of the most inhospitable and barren regions of the world: the deserts of the Sahara and Gobi, the Central Asian steppe, and the polar tundras. Yurts can be warm in temperatures of minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit and cool in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Yurts are still the most common type of habitation in Mongolia and even in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar (sometimes known as Ulan Bator) more than half the population lives in yurts.

  8. 2tePuaao2B | | #8

    Robert Riversong has been banned from GBA...

  9. David Meiland | | #9

    Say what??

  10. GBA Editor
    Martin Holladay | | #10

    David,
    Although Robert Riversong has contributed greatly to this website by answering technical questions with useful information, he has also repeatedly ignored requests to tone down his insults. After being warned of the possibility of being temporarily banned, he posted a vulgar insult yesterday including a four-letter word that begins with F.

    GBA has suspended Robert's access to our website for two months.

    Robert is not the only person who has posted insults on GBA, and several other visitors have been warned about the GBA policy. GBA will strive to enforce our policy consistently.

  11. 2tePuaao2B | | #11

    I can only hope that the instigators get equal treatment. Anyone that gets bullied enough will lash back, it's only human. GBA members seeking advice are the losers here.

  12. 2tePuaao2B | | #12

    I believe that Robert was insulted much more than he insulted... since you brought it up.
    Much, much more good than bad.

  13. user-901114 | | #13

    Figures this had to happen in the middle of my build. Where else can I get some surly, genius, grumpy, advice?? Anybody have his email addy?

  14. homedesign | | #14

Log in or create an account to post an answer.

Community

Recent Questions and Replies

  • |
  • |
  • |
  • |