Welcome to Bender's Bjurts, the most amazing new structure since the dawn of time!

What's new:

10/25/2007: 100 bjurts! That's right, I'm pledging 100 bjurt kits for Southern California fire relief! I've already contacted Burners Without Borders and they will be taking some of them, but I don't think they can use them all. If you represent a relief organization, or you need a structure on your property while you rebuild, please contact me at the mail link below.

09/15/2007: The worst Burning Man weather in twelve years (or so I've been told) was not enough to defeat the bjurt. There were five bjurts on the playa, and all survived intact. There were some minor issues (a little bowing under the 50MPH winds and a few pins needed to be tapped with a hammer at tear-down), but all in all, I can say that bjurts are, "playa-tested, playa-tough". More to follow when I get my blog working. See pic below.

07/20/2007: I survived Moondance Jam in Northern Minnesota. My brother and I built the northernmost bjurt to date, and it made a great covered dining tent. It's covered with standard tarps I ordered over the internet (20' square for the roof, 7'x30' for the back wall). See pic below.

I am bender...

...and this is my bjurt (Burning Man '07).

...and another (Moondance Jam).

...and another (Freedom Fest)...

What is a bjurt?

A bjurt is a patent-pending structure similar to the ancient Central Asian structure, yurt. Like a yurt, the bjurt is stable, roomy, and with a vaulted ceiling to allow heat to rise. But there are significant differences:

The cross-pieces of the wall are permanently attached to the roof poles, and the whole structure folds up like a camp chair. The roof can remain attached to the roof poles during set-up and tear-down. This allows you to go from zero to shade in less than five minutes! Putting up the vertical supports and walls takes a little more time, but you get to work in the shade.
The corners can be staked directly into the ground, completely eliminating the need for any guy wires or other external support structures. Furthermore, the ground becomes the lower support plane, leading to an amazingly rigid structure with multiply redundant support. There is no single point of failure!
The structure is octagonal, so rectangular furniture fits with much less wasted space than within a circular structure.
The walls are square and of a standard size (seven feet or five feet), allowing the use of standard tarps as walls. The cross pieces also allow a variety of attachment points, so it is easy to attach even non-standard sized and shaped coverings.
Once the vertical supports are in place, up to two wall cross-pieces can be removed, leaving large square openings.
Multiple bjurts can be arranged together, creating arbitrarily large covered areas.

In field tests, this structure has outperformed commercially available structures of similar size.

See menu bar at the top of this page for more.

Thank you very much for stopping by. Please have a wonderful day.

This page lovingly crafted by bender (Tom Roden). Please send questions or comments to: bender@bendersBjurts.com