Taking place on-site for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which it appeared online, Burning Man is back this year with a variety of installations. The festival is perhaps best known for the burning effigy of a man on the last night of the weekly event.
The top ten designs for Burning Man’s off-grid desert outpost, Fly Ranch, have been revealed
Aiming to leave no trace and operate without an official currency, participants gather in the collection of camps and artefacts collectively referred to as Black Rock City and must bring, build and deconstruct facilities in the often hostile desert conditions. Each designer must plan the installation and shipping of their materials due to the decentralized operations of the festival, which has over 70,000 attendees. In 2022, many of the installations focused on reused materials, including a light sculpture made from plastic reclaimed from the ocean. Many also took into account the need for shade in the desert, which festivals call “playa”. Read on to see some of this year’s installations: The above and top photo is by Rand Larson Empyrean Temple by Laurence Renzo Verbeck One thing that remains the same every year at Burning Man is the presence of a monumental wooden temple that also burns at the end of the festival. Every year, the designer changes. This year, Colorado-based Laurence Renzo Verbeck designed an eight-pointed star that is oriented around a central gathering place. Above the central gathering area, a gem-shaped core was filled with lights that at night illuminated the intricate grid that ran along the sides of the points. Photo by Remy Hii Project Carillon by Steven Brummond Designer Steven Brummond chose to use recycled plywood for this 48-foot tall bell tower. The panels were arranged to resemble a herringbone or porkbone look, according to the designer. “This design filters light to make the tower glow from the inside out,” Brummond said. Participants were able to climb the tower to interact with a set of ropes connected to 99 bells installed atop the structure. Photo by Jane Hu The SKUM Thundercloud by Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange, partners at the Danish architecture studio BIG, designed a spherical installation for the festival. In Danish, skum means foam and the design was made of an inflatable material similar to that used in making hot air balloons. During the day, the structure provided shade, and at night, it was illuminated internally by “lightning bolts” that responded to external noise. “When a sound – manmade or natural – is heard in the SKUM area, the lightning stops – only to resume when quiet calm returns,” the designers said. Photo by Jane Hu Unrestricted by Jules and David Nelson-Gal This Romanesque structure in the desert was conceived by artists Jules and David Nelson-Gal as a “temple of human thought, altered by time, space and energy”. Over 3,000 books were deconstructed and framed to create the library. Three interior rooms allowed participants to see the roof of the structure. The interior included sconces, book page chandeliers and tables. Photo by Marcus Vinicius De Paula Titan by Marcus Vinicius De Paula Located deep in the desert far from the camps and not listed on the festival map, Titan was meant to reward those with a sense of adventure, according to the artist. Two huge slabs of black Zimbabwe granite, weighing a total of 2,000 pounds (907 kg), were placed and lit from below. “This piece, along with my broader work, looks closely at the use of long-lasting materials, both originating long before and continuing long after the human race,” said De Paula. “The granite in this project dates back 500 million years.” Photo by Jamen Percy Purification of Arthur Mamou-Mani French architect Arthur Mamou-Mani designed a fractal gallery and an amphitheater for this year’s festival. The wooden roof was criss-crossed by long sheets of fabric that provided shade, with the whole structure oriented towards a central point. “This infinite space has seven portals that rise into the sky and become increasingly complex and intimate, forming a dreamlike set of galleries and performance spaces for all to use and place art of all kinds,” Mamou-Mani said. Before being installed at the festival, the original design was opened up digitally through a metaverse installation, which people could visit during the Dezeen Virtual Design Festival. Photo by John Marx The Museum of No Spectators by John Marx and J Absinthia Vermut Architect John Marx and artist J Abinthia Vermut designed an outdoor art gallery called the Museum of No Spectators that aims to challenge what the designers perceive as the “elitist” nature of galleries. Constructed with a steel frame supporting aluminum panels, the gallery allowed participants to take and leave artwork on the walls as they pleased. Marx described the structure as an “edifice with its unusually shaped galleries, appearing part machine, part creature, part abstract and surreal form.” Photo by Gurpreet Chawla Solar Shrine by Antwane Lee and the Collective Designed with elements of ancient Egyptian and Nubian mythology in mind, the Solar Shrine featured a pillared temple in front of a huge vertical ‘gate’. Made of lumber wrapped in plywood, the structure featured a series of fire elements that spewed flames into the air. “The height of the elements of the art installation, starting from the high gate, symbolizes the power of the Sun as it rises in the east with gradually decreasing size structures in the west representing the waning of its power,” said the artists. Photo by Matt Emmi The Last Ocean by Jen Lewin Artist Jen Lewin has created an installation with interactive tiles and a sculpture of a polar bear, all made from plastics collected from the ocean. The shape of the floor tiles was based on the pentagonal tile developed by mathematician Marjorie Rice. During the process, Lewin encountered a shortage of manufacturers working with recycled ocean plastics in the United States and ended up outsourcing the manufacturing to the South African company Ocean Plastic Technologies. Photo by Jane Hu Paradisium by Dave Keane & Folly Builders Derived entirely from salvage, Paradisium was designed to represent a “comprehensive forest ecosystem” in the middle of the desert. The designers created a series of trees with graphic elements on the side. The tallest four served as perches for the participants, while small pods were included to provide further shade. “Paradisium is a grove made of long-fallen trees that reminds us of the beauty of the forest and our interconnectedness and interdependence with nature, while encouraging a sense of community and an investment in our shared future,” said club. Photo by Aaron Muszalski Aaron Musalski’s Dummy 2022 Each year, a different designer takes on the centerpiece of the festival’s ‘Man’, a sculptural human figure that burns on the last day of the festival. Using a dream sequence from Chinese literature as inspiration to adhere to this year’s festival theme – waking dreams – Muszalski decorated the structure with symbols and placed it on a temple-like pedestal. Burning Man took place from Sunday August 28th to Monday September 5th in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. See the Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world
