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.
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." Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange intended the giant sphere to act as a guiding landmark for festival-goers, and the two set up an Indiegogo campaign back in July to raise the remaining funding for the installation. Though short of its goal, the campaign is still live, and the ORB has already underwent construction.
The Burning Man Festival 2018 is now underway in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada until September 3rd.