EU-Digest: THE MODERN YURT FINDS ITS WAY FROM COASTAL BUCKS HARBOR MAINE TO ALMERE HOLLAND

EU-Digest"

THE MODERN YURT FINDS ITS WAY FROM COASTAL BUCKS HARBOR MAINE TO ALMERE HOLLAND

De Almere Stad, a local Dutch newspaper in the city of Almere, reporting on some of the new ecologically friendly building projects in the city, said that one of the more innovative building designs known as "the Yurt" was recently purchased from the Bill Copperthwaite collection in Bucks Harbor Maine.

Modern day versions of the age-old Yurt have been popping up all over the U.S.A., and now also in Almere Holland, a city of some 178.000 inhabitantants, created only 30 years ago on land reclaimed from the ocean. Almere is considered one of the most avant-garde new cities in the Netherlands.

EU-Digest found a description of this modern day version of the Yurt by Bill Copperthwaite in Modern Earth News, where he writes: "The Yurt has its origins in the folk wisdom of the ancient nomads of inner Asia. There, the prototype has withstood the fierce cold, the violent winds and the intense heat of the steppes for thousands of years. The traditional Yurt, made of light poles and covered with thick felt, was a portable structure which the nomads carried with them in their search for suitable grazing for their herds. It is out of a profound respect for the technical genius of these people that the name yurt was chosen for our contemporary structure.

The nomadic Yurt builders appear to be the first people to have used the principle of the tension-band in the support of a dwelling. This advance allowed the roof, or roof-wall, of a structure to be raised above the ground without the use of internal posts or trusswork. This solved a basic architectural problem of eliminating the negative space, space formed by the walls of most tent structures as they meet the ground. The challenge was to have neither negative space, posts nor trusswork blocking the interior of the dwelling. These ancient peoples made an ingenious discovery that, at once, gave to their tent a positive wall angle, a clear inner space, a circular structure to fend off strong winds while permitting less heat loss per unit of volume than other shapes . . . and, still allowed the dwelling to remain portable."

In Europe the Yurt design has also found its way to Ariege in the South of France.

For additional information see also: http://archilibre.free.fr/free/yurt.html and http://www.motherearthnews.com/library/1971_March_April/Yurts____New