Living in Yurts Today
When the ingenuity of the original yurt design was recognized by Europeans the design ideas spread quickly right around the globe. In the 1960s a well travelled Harvard educated man called Bill Coperthwaite recognized how the yurt could change the way people look at where and how they live. In Central Asia the yurt has proven to be a reliable and warm portable home for the nomadic tribes of the area. Bill Coperthwaite knew that he could never convince Americans to take to a nomadic lifestyle. What he did think he could do was show people a different way of living – something that they could build themselves and become more self reliant for shelter.
If you look at most people they get plans for a house drawn up for them, they then hire builders and tradesmen to handle the construction and fitting of it and then they simply move in. People have almost no personal knowledge of providing even the most basics types of shelter for themselves or their families and this is something that Bill Coperthwaite hoped to change. Even with a minimum amount of skill anyone should be able to assemble a yurt and by association a yurt home if needed – the design principles remain the same for both.
Some people took the challenge up for themselves and constructed their own yurt homes but in one of those typical instances of irony the yurt actually created its own mini industry with companies popping up all over the world to provide what are now called “round homes” and “modular homes” but once you see them you can see that the yurt or ger was definitely the inspiration and provided the basic blueprint for these homes.
If you want to build a yurt you can either use plans that a professional builder has drawn up or you can buy a plan that’s already been designed and approved by somebody else and work from that. Very few people are interested in building these though and most people prefer to buy a preassembled yurt home from a company that specializes in this type of construction.
A traditional yurt home was a single level experience and most people who build yurt houses try to stick to this idea but you will see more and more yurt homes that try to mix a New England style house with a yurt – sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. Where the yurt style of home does stick to the original principles of the design is that they’re more organic in nature and in how they fit into the landscape. They basically use a lot of wood and fabric in their design and have a natural ability to blend into the background of any landscape they’re built on. This is unlike the housing horrors that some people call homes that are always built in some of the most scenic parts of any country.
From an efficiency point of view the yurt home works at a lot of levels. From an exterior and weathering point of view yurts were designed to cope with the often hard climate of Central Asia so as you can see from the design of a yurt they’re actually intended to be aerodynamic in nature. A Westernized square or rectangular home will resist the flow of wind where a yurt allows wind to flow right around it putting less pressure on the structure.
There’s also a very communal and spiritual feel to living in a yurt home even when it’s clad with wood and not the traditional wooden lattice, canvas and felt design. Some part of living in a round structure like this connects us to our ancient roots. You can see everything around you with no dark corners to hide anything or anyone in. And no matter where you sit in the yurt you can have light from the modern skylight or what was the toono and if you have a central heating source the heat will radiate out to fill the entire yurt too.
Because of the soothing nature of the yurt or round house you’ll find that they’re often used as retreat centers, community gathering areas and centers for the healing arts. People who live in yurt styled homes always say that they feel more relaxed and in touch with nature and the world around them and even that they sleep better than they have done in years.
It might be just coincidence or us wanting to get back to nature but the yurt has definitely struck a chord with the modern Western world and is something you can expect to see a lot more of in the future.
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