Ski house from Mongolia

Ruapehu Bulletin, 7 September 1990, Page 7

Ski house from Mongolia

From Outer Mongolia, via Australia to Ohakune has come the Yurt, a round house with a high dome ceiling based on a tent design that is older than the teepee.

The original Mongolian Yurt is a tent made of yak hide and felt and used by nomadic tribes, while the Yurt that has arrived in Ohakune, in the Miro Street Yurt Village (where else?) is built from materials that are more familiar to the less nomadic Kiwi. Builders of the Ohakune yurts, the Fucsa Group from Sydney, offer a wide range of materials to use, with the ones they are presently building put togethei with materials that have become part of the New Zealand alpine look. Yurts are round. Thal is the first thing thal strikes you about them. The roof is like a squal witch's hat, which is the second thing that strikes you. The builders start with a platform, set up a circle of wall panels, then crane on a circle of piepiece shaped roof panels, which are then all

tied together with a steel cable. It is this compression cable which is at the heart of the system. From then on building takes on a more conventional style, with all internal walls acting just as dividers which makes the structure quite versatile in floor plan. A feature of the Australian developed yurts is the multi-radius designs available, where a short radius section encompasses the living areas, for example, and a larger radius section takes in bedrooms, bathroom, laundry and kitchen. A dome at the top of the roof provides excellent natural lighting, Brett Gibson, builder of the Ohakune yurts, told the Bulletin. Apart from the obvious uniqueness of the yurt design in New Zealand, Brett said other advantages include their

low cost. He said they can be erected at 30 per cent less than a more conventional building rate. This is achieyed through such savings as in framing timber and labour costs. Also less floor area is needed. Brett said 92 per cent of the available floor ;area can be utilised which beats most conventional designs. There is also no wasted floor space. After the wall and roof sections are prefabricated in a workshop, an average yurt needs five days for foundation construction then one day to install the wall sections, a day to fit the roof, then a day to secure the building. Another ten days would see the house finished, said Brett. The group sells the houses either in kit form or as a lockable shell, or will finish one completely. The Ohakune yurts are the first in New Zealand for the Fucsa Group and possibly the first of any yurt in the country. Brett said they decided to build yurts in Ohakune because the design suits holiday homes and because it is a tourist town. People from many other parts of the country will have a chance to see them here, he said. "The ambience of the yurt is what makes it, that and the natural lighting," said Brett. "The roof is the yurt. The yurt grows on you and after a while becomes yours." The Ohakune yurts are a product of several years of development by the Australians, with a number having been built and lived in there. The yurt is also built as farm buildings, showrooms, workshops,

offices, information centres, staff rooms, motel units, churches,

rumpus rooms, cabanas, saunas or conservatories.