Large-Scale Installations Transform the Desert Landscape at Coachella Music Festival 2025

Written by Antonia Piñeiro
Published on April 15, 2025

The 2025 edition of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival continues its tradition of merging large-scale contemporary art with music, transforming the Empire Polo Field into a dynamic landscape of immersive installations. Curated by Raffi Lehrer of Public Art Company (PAC) in collaboration with Goldenvoice Art Director Paul Clemente, this year's program explores themes of movement, illusion, and impermanence through newly commissioned works and returning artists. Since 2016, Coachella's art program has evolved into a multidisciplinary platform, with most of its production managed in-house and on-site. The 2025 festival runs across two weekends, April 11-13 and April 18-20. This year's edition includes three newly commissioned art installations in addition to the permanent and returning exhibits.

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The installations, ranging from structures that ripple in the wind to sculptures that dissolve in shifting light, aim to activate the environment, responding to the desert's rhythms, changing light, and the constant flow of festival-goers. In total, the 2025 edition features three new artworks and five returning participants, offering audiences art that functions both as a landmark and a public space. The new installations are Taffy, a spectacle featuring seven towering cylinders by Canadian designer Stephanie Lin, Le Grand Bouquet, a floral installation by French design collective Uchronia, and Take Flight, a group of 60-foot-high towers by the London-based studio of design duo Isabel Gibson and Helen Chesner.

Read on to discover both the new installations and the permanent ones, Transforming the desert landscape Into an immersive artistic and musical experience.

https://www.archdaily.com/1029061/10-architectural-installations-at-the-2025-milan-design-week-and-salone-del-mobile

New Additions to Coachella's Art Program

Taffy / Stephanie Lin

Taffy is a site-responsive installation composed of seven cylindrical towers, each between 25 and 50 feet tall, wrapped in scalloped mesh that produces shifting moiré effects. Drawing from midcentury desert modernism, the towers' chromatic palette changes with sunlight, creating a temporal reading of the landscape. Beneath the structure, circular plywood benches offer shaded seating, framing the installation as both a visual landmark and social gathering space.

Le Grand Bouquet / Uchronia

Le Grand Bouquet is a 32-foot-tall inflatable floral structure referencing the desert's seasonal blooms through a composition of 19 luminous fabric flowers. Six smaller satellite bouquets expand the installation across the site, while petal-shaped seating invites passive interaction. With formal cues drawn from 1960s and '70s graphic design, the installation creates a playful, immersive environment that fosters moments of rest and collective enjoyment.

Take Flight / Isabel + Helen

Take Flight consists of three 60-foot kinetic towers integrating custom turbines that respond to the prevailing winds of the Coachella Valley. Referencing early aviation design, the installation explores wind power as both a mechanical and aesthetic force. Additional wearable turbines and mobile components extend the installation's interactive potential. As daylight transitions to night, the project shifts from meditative to performative, highlighting the dynamic intersection of environmental systems, movement, and speculative design.

Installations from previous editions include Robert Bose's Balloon Chain, a large-scale kinetic sculpture composed of multiple expansive strands of helium-filled balloons that can reach over half a mile (800 meters) into the atmosphere. The Do LaB's interactive installations, Don Kennell's large-scale outdoor sculptures, and Spectra by NEWSUBSTANCE, a towering, perspective-shifting pavilion of light exploring the symbiotic relationship between illumination and landscape. The event also offers Raices Cultura cultural programming, which includes hands-on workshops, educational opportunities, and social gatherings in Coachella Valley.