Trust designer Uula Jero on the yurt he created for outdoors company Trakke; he once, according to Wired, lived in one of the round, tent-like dwellings for a year in an industrialized part of Cologne, Germany, after selling off most of his stuff, in order to "see how much I actually require." So not only is he a designer willing to act upon the fact that he's "a little bit annoyed with the nature of material production in this world"—leading one to think he might put extra care into what he decides to bring into it—but he has actual firsthand experience to bring to his take on the yurt.
In a world where "glamping"—a portmanteau of "glamorous" and "camping" probably invented by PR people to infuriate writers into covering flashy camping gear—continues to be in use, and Neiman Marcus has tried to hawk a $75K model of the traditional dwelling of Central Asian nomads, Jero's point of view is a refreshing one. At $7,500, the yurt he created for Trakke still isn't cheap, but it was designed to be low-impact, easy to set up, and portable enough to actually camp with, counting 17 panels of 5mm-thick CNC-milled plywood, 18 roof-supporting dowels, and a canvas that together weigh about 250 pounds, which is less than half the weight of the traditional yurt. Head to Wired for more details.
· A Handcrafted, $7,500 Yurt That's Far Cooler Than Your House [Wired]