Hexayurt
= an open source disaster relief shelter
URL = http://hexayurt.com/
Description
"The Hexayurt is a refugee shelter system that uses an approach based on "autonomous building" to provide not just a shelter, but a comprehensive family support unit which includes drinking water purification, composting toilets, fuel-efficient stoves and solar electric lighting."
From a Tree Hugger interview:
TH: Part of what underlies this design approach is open source. People toss that around a lot. How does the Hexayurt represent an open source design approach?
Vinay: It's flat out public domain. We looked at using the GNU public license, but there are some transactional overheads which are basically that you have to have somebody from a large organization get permission from their lawyers before they can come and play. So what we did was we just put it into the public domain and told people if you contribute something to this project it's in the public domain. And people have contributed all kinds of really serious design innovations. Different ways of doing doors, different ways of doing modeling, alternative approaches to doing the infrastructure. There's all kinds of stuff which has just gotten kind of swept up into the project as we've gone forward. (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/the_th_interview_gupta.php)