When we started designing Mayab Center, we knew we wanted the structures to be eco-friendly. Low impact. Originally, we planned on erecting some kind of tents, maybe putting them up off the ground on decks. Then, last summer, Joe and I traveled to Alaska and had the opportunity to kayak out to an island in the Kenai Peninsula and hike out into the forest where we slept in a yurt.
That began our obsession. We spoke with various sellers and builders of yurts and examined them thoroughly. By the end of that trip, we were convinced that when we finally started building Mayab Center, we would be building yurts on the beach.
For about a year, we researched yurts on-line, checked out every library book we could get our hands on, and drove out to rural Minnesota to look at a traditional Mongolian yurt set up at a felting festival. We even found a guy living in the heart of South Minneapolis who had built two yurts, adapting traditional style with modern materials, and he was living in them all winter long! We poked around inside them and picked his brain for hours.
That day, I remember feeling like I could build a yurt – definitely. It’s a basic and simple design. But then I would consider the complexity of the geometry involved – the way the you need to decide on the roof angle, the number of poles, the diameter of the walls, spacing the poles evenly, how to build the yurt so it holds together using tension! Not to mention how to choose the right materials, how to sew the skin. . . my head was spinning. I lost all confidence.
We went back to the research and starting collecting photos and making lists,
watching videos on youtube:
reading forums, and talking with yurt fanatics from all around the world.
Things started to come together.
