Black Rock City: The Latest Architecture and News

Known for its unconventional art installations and striking desert setting, the Burning Man festival has concluded this year with an array of temporary installations spread across the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The festival's 2024 theme, "Curiouser & Curiouser," inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, encouraged participants to embrace wonder and whimsy.

At Burning Man, a tapestry of themes emerges through diverse installations, from reflections on connectivity and isolation to explorations of time and space. Installations like Nebula Shroom Grove and the Temple of Together emphasize community and unity, inviting interaction and participation. Pieces like "I'm Fine" and Tree Circle delve into universal emotions and humanity's connection to the infinite, while works like Matter Out of Time and The End of Time play with perceptions of time and reality.

+ 36

+ 4

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mark Fromson (@autobiographica)

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.

+ 21

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.

+ 53

+ 60

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.

Ever wonder how Burning Man’s famous Black Rock City rises from the dust of the Nevada Desert every year? A video by vlogger Shalaco Sching offers an insight, documenting the process undertaken by the team of surveyors tasked with creating a temporary city from scratch, year after year.

As Shalaco documents through his video below, his Instagram, and a written account on the Burning Man Journal, a team of 21 surveyors spend seven days laying the lines and waypoints of a 5.62-mile plan, creating the largest and most iconic art installation at Burning Man – the city itself.

+ 14

The design of the main temple at Burning Man 2018 has been revealed: Galaxia by architect Arthur Mamou-Mani.

Designed using 3D parametric software, the pavilion is formed from 20 timber trusses that spiral in toward a central point the reaches toward the sky. Starting on the ground, the triangular trusses span large enough distances to create a series of spiraling paths toward the center of the structure, where a giant 3D-printed mandala will be displayed. The spaces in between the truss members will also be large enough to serve as alcoves.

A post shared by [ b ] e c k e r (@thebecker) on Aug 29, 2017 at 10:54pm PDT

The week of Burning Man 2017 is halfway through, and glimpses of the event are starting to make their rounds through the social mediasphere. Under the theme of “Radical Ritual,” this year features as many impressive structures and sculptures as ever, including a central temple holding the wooden man built to commemorate the Golden Spike, the ceremonial final spike driven to join the rails of the United States’ first transcontinental railroad.

Check out our favorite structures from the event, below.

A photo posted by Burning Man (@burningman) on Aug 4, 2016 at 1:27pm PDT

Burning Man 2016 is underway in the temporary city of Black Rock City, Nevada – meaning for one week, thousands of festival goers will romp through the desert taking pictures of the hundreds of art and architectural installations constructed for the event. This year's theme is "DaVinci's Workshop," inspiring sculptures based off the artist's famous inventions and artworks, including a large-scale interpretation of the Vitruvian Man on a circular frame.

Read on to see some of the best structures and installations found at Burning Man 2016. 

A photo posted by Kyle Krieger (@kylekriegerhair) on Sep 10, 2015 at 9:22am PDT

It has been a week since the conclusion of this year's Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nevada, and images of its most imaginative structures are still surfacing. Even Bjarke Ingels has published a few of his favorite findings from the week-long event. Read on to see of the best structures and installations found at Burning Man 2015.