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Yurt Man
Arthur Zwern (MBA ’85) and his solar-powered Hexayurt generated buzz at this year’s Burning Man festival, the annual bohemian happening of free expression and environmentally responsible bonhomie that draws tens of thousands to the scorching hinterlands of summertime Nevada. Playing against festival type, the Hexayurt was not a temporary artsy structure but a prototype for a low-cost home, built from hexacomb cardboard panels, that Zwern (aka “Sunshine Dreamer”) and his company, HOMErgent, see as ideal for disaster relief and globally sustainable affordable housing.
“For less than $2,000, we can provide better housing than what most people in the world already have,” Zwern told the Los Angeles Times (September 4, 2009), which declared the Hexayurt “remarkably cool in the skin-ripping heat.” Observed Zwern, “Every CO2 molecule out there came from a carbon atom somebody burned. With mirrors, lensing, and focusing, we can use the sun directly instead of in the form of ‘batteries’ like wood and coal that renew slowly when at all. The sun provides heating, cooling, recycling, everything.”
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