Yurts and prefab container houses: for some time, I have been obsessed with both of them. It all started when I spent a weekend with my friend Deanna in Comptche and found myself wanting to build a platform and put up the same kind of heavy green platform tent we used to stay in at summer camp. Fantasies of the tent migrated into fantasies of a yurt. Then, those dreams morphed into the idea that we should buy a few acres of our own out in the woods, perhaps in Yolo County, and put up a cabin or something so we could go there on weekends.
Then that turned into a treasured fantasy–why not build a really cool house out of alternative materials? Like old shipping containers, as Jennifer Seigel seems to do so elegantly. 
Yurts, on the other hand, are not particularly elegant, but they are very cool. Traditional portable houses in places such as Mongolia and Kazakhstan yurts are round structures build out of poles and covered in a thick felt covering. You can buy a kit and build a nice-sized yurt that you can live in year round for $10-15,000.
Log cabins and platform tents are less exotic and more practical; since this is all totally a fantasy, I can think about all four of these choices and–do nothing. but continue to day dream. 
Yurts and prefab container houses: for some time, I have been obsessed with both of them. It all started when I spent a weekend with my friend Deanna in Comptche and found myself wanting to build a platform and put up the same kind of heavy green platform tent we used to stay in at summer camp. Fantasies of the tent migrated into fantasies of a yurt. Then, those dreams morphed into the idea that we should buy a few acres of our own out in the woods, perhaps in Yolo County, and put up a cabin or something so we could go there on weekends.
Then that turned into a treasured fantasy–why not build a really cool house out of alternative materials? Like old shipping containers, as Jennifer Seigel seems to do so elegantly.
Yurts, on the other hand, are not particularly elegant, but they are very cool. Traditional portable houses in places such as Mongolia and Kazakhstan yurts are round structures build out of poles and covered in a thick felt covering. You can buy a kit and build a nice-sized yurt that you can live in year round for $10-15,000.
Log cabins and platform tents are less exotic and more practical; since this is all totally a fantasy, I can think about all four of these choices and–do nothing. but continue to day dream.