Approxies
A city hall for Burning Man
Gabrielle Clune
Instructor Neil Robinson
Burning Man is a community that prides itself on radical inclusion. Anyone can be part of the community and there are no prerequisites. Burners value creative cooperation and collaboration and strive to produce an inclusive community by supporting social interactions. Adopting the initiative for a 365-day Burning Man, located at Fly Ranch, citizenship began to take form. Having accepted that Burning Man is not a normal community, it became apparent that a normal city hall would not satisfy the needs of the burners.
By designing through “mismemory,” 18 spaces were created by embracing the unrealistic reality that Burning Man operates in. This idea of memory began to play a role throughout the rest of the project, raising interesting questions such as how do people remember architecture and what is the resolution of those memories? In this glamorized society of social media, the resolution of Instagram creates a warped reality of the memories we create. Though memories of Burning Man pass by in a blur, fragments of reality are captured and exploited across social media. “Approxies” serve as links between the clarity of the original Burning Man and the ever increasingly pixelated world of today.
The traditional typology of the hall did not embrace the radical ideology that burners have created and hindered their ideals. Having accepted that Burning Man is not a normal community, it became apparent that a normal city hall would not satisfy the needs of the burners. Adopting the initiative for a 365-day Burning Man, located at Fly Ranch, citizenship began to take form. The memories created during Burning Man are the most important part of the festival. The fragments of memory people leave with are similar to fragments of space in which one remembers a building. Our memories are often composed of interactions within space rather than the space itself.
Injecting government into Burning Man without gentrifying the culture must be done in a careful balance of work and play. Eighteen different camps were designed using “mismemory” and drafted into ideal elevations. The space was then abstracted through pixielation and careful construction of 3-dimensional space. The sequences of space were then distorted creating the space for programs to exist.
facade of protest
black rock solar
finance
meeting room
divorce chapel
human resources
vinegar baptismal
wedding chapel
planning department
mayor/admin
bathroom
public records
makers space
event operations
waste management
rolling confessional
story teller
tech
MEMORY
Ideal elevations were created based on the memories in relation to the program of the space and the Burning Man user.
PIXELATION
The space was then abstracted through pixelation and careful construction of 3-dimensional space.
RESULTING FORM
The sequences of space were then distorted creating the space for programs to exist.
GENERATED STRUCTURE
3D-scanned forms were then simplified, smoothed, and joined using Grasshopper to create one closed mesh surface
Though memories of Burning Man pass by in a blur, fragments of reality these spaces serve as a place for interaction between burners. “Approxies” serve as links between the clarity of the original Burning Man and the ever increasingly pixelated world. Although most only see Burning Man from Instagram and aerial views, all of burners’ interactions happen at the ground level. Careful integration of nodes of program help to capture the interesting ways people travel around the festival.
