Nevada: The Latest Architecture and News

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Burning Man, the annual festival taking place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, has opened on August 27th, with thousands of festivalgoers gathering to create the Black Rock City, a ‘temporary metropolis’ complete with numerous installations, artworks, and pavilions that celebrate “community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.” This year, however, the festival experience has been different, as heavy rains inundated the desert and festival site, creating thick, ankle-deep mud. The roads to and from the festival have been closed as large vehicles risk remaining stuck in the mud. While some people have left the site by walking out, the majority of the 70,000 campers remain stranded, as reported by CNN.

Nevada's annual Burning Man has retured to the Black Rock Desert, after a three-year physical attendance hiatus due to the pandemic. From August 28 until September 5th, this year's festival explored the theme of "Walking Dreams", celebrating the dreamers who channel the power of dreams and imagination, both in literal and figurative ways. Similar to every year, the pavilions that were installed in the desert explored the theme in creative and unexpected ways.

This year, many of the installations approached themes of ecology and sustainability. Some of the installations were built with reused materials, including an interactive light sculpture made from plastic recovered from the ocean. Every year, the Burning Man festival issues a number of grants, funded from revenues from ticket sales, for the purpose of partially funding specific art projects.

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After a three-year physical attendance hiatus due to the pandemic, Nevada's annual Burning Man is making a return to the Black Rock Desert. From August 28 until September 5th, this year's festival will welcome thousands of burners to celebrate music and art in a temporary metropolis dedicated to "community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance". Ahead of its 2022 inauguration, we are taking a look at some of the best installations to have been constructed during Burning Man's previous editions.

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Michael Heizer’s immense sculpture the City, an ambitious artwork of an extraordinary size, will begin to accept visits from the public beginning September 2, 2022. The announcement was made by the Triple Aught Foundation, the not-for-profit organization responsible for managing the long-term oversight and maintenance of Michael Heizer’s immense sculpture. The artwork, a mile and a half long and nearly half a mile wide, is located in a remote stretch of the high Nevada desert. Work on the structure began in 1972 when the artist was 27 years old.

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This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights cultural structures submitted by the ArchDaily Community. From pavilions to installations, this article explores the topic of cultural urban interventions and presents approaches submitted to us from all over the world.

Featuring a pavilion nestled in the sand dunes of the Persian desert, an afrofuturistic, interactive art installation proposed for the upcoming Burning Man event, and a new take on summer cinemas in Russia, this roundup explores how architects reimagined traditional gathering places and created urban interventions in all scales. The round up also includes a collection of structures in the United Arab Emirates, United Sates of America, France, and the United Kingdom, each responding to different contexts and topographies.

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Making history, Virgin Hyperloop’s Pegasus pod carried its first passengers in the Nevada desert. Designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and Kilo Design, Pegasus or XP-2 is a new vehicle typology for an autonomous transportation system to achieve hyperloop travel at the speed of over 1,000km/hour, the fastest form of land-based travel.

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This year’s theme for the famous annual Burning Man festival revolves around the notion of “Metamorphosis”. Taking place in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, from the 25^th of August till the 2^nd of September, each year artists and architects from around the world get creative and imagine installations and pavilions responding to one general question.

For the 2019 edition, Burning Man has already revealed the design for the Central Temple by Geordie Van Der Bosch. Read on to discover more about 2 interventions, taking part in this year's event, an Ornamental Shade from San Francisco and a Desert Sauna from Finland.

Burning Man has revealed the design for the central 2019 Temple for Black Rock City by Geordie Van Der Bosch. Featuring a design inspired by the Torii gates of the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Japan, the Temple submission was chosen for its elegant simplicity. Dubbed The Temple of Direction, the design consists of wooden archways that form a linear passageway to a large central hall.

In a world increasingly obsessed with the potential of Blockchain (the decentralized technology behind Bitcoin), lawyer and cryptocurrency millionaire Jeffrey Berns has purchased an enormous 67,000-acre plot of the Nevada desert near Reno envisioned as an “experimental community” revolving around the technology.

His company, Blockchains LLC, has worked in collaboration with Tom Wiscombe Architecture and Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects (EYRC) to design “Innovation Park” which will be “developed into a smart city with decentralized Blockchain underlying all infrastructure.”

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Bjarke Ingels Group has built an 80-foot-diameter ORB at the 2018 Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nevada. The ORB was designed as an inflated spherical mirror with a steel mast. A series of photos have captured the ORB from both Burning Man festival goers and BIG partner Kai-Uwe Bergmann. As a landmark in The Playa, the ORB conceptually references mother earth and human expression, designed to leave no trace following its deflation.

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Moscow-based designer Alex Shtanuk has launched an Indiegogo campaign for his 107,000-square-foot (10,000-square-meter) blanket woven from over 3000 NASA Space blankets, to feature at this year’s Burning Man festival at Black Rock City, Nevada.

“The Blanket” seeks to “bring the waves of the ancient Lake Lahontan back to Playa,” influenced by wind conditions to mirror surreal forms such as waves, mountains, or giant sculptures. With an exterior metallic coating, the blanket will reflect 97% of radiated heat, creating a cool, refreshing environment underneath for those seeking shelter from the hot Playa sun.

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Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange have launched an Indiegogo fundraiser for an 80-foot-diameter ORB to be constructed for the 2018 Burning Man festival at Black Rock City, Nevada. Scaled at 1/500,000th of the earth’s surface, the reflective sphere sits “at the axis of art & utility, capturing the entire Black Rock City in an airborne temporal monument that mirrors the Burning Man experience to the Burners as single beings in the midst of an intentional community."

As well as acting as a wayfinder for navigating The Playa, the ORB sits as a tribute to mother earth and human expression, designed to blend with its surroundings during the night, and leave no trace following its deflation.

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