Cameron Nelson

Radical City™

The original “Burning Man” was an impromptu gathering on San

Francisco’s Baker Beach in 1986. That year, “The Man” was a mere 8 feet tall,

and his immolators were just a few individuals and a haphazard crowd of

onlookers. What began as an isolated artistic expression, however, in 1990 was

moved to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert at the edict of the Golden Gate Park

Police, and since then the weeklong event has swelled to an annual attendance

of more than 70,000 marked by all the signs of urban infrastructure: planned

streets, signage, health amenities, and federal regulation. Its countercultural,

anti-aesthetic roots have given rise, ironically, to a highly ordered event arguably

possessing an aesthetic of its own. Indeed, as Burning Man grows in population,

so it grows in its metropolitan character, attracting, as so many metropolises do,

the input of architects and planners. Although it has been suggested that

Burning Man might be considered a Foucauldian heterotopia,1 this paper

proposes that it in fact shows signs of homogenization. The imaginative

pavilions, theme camps, and other installations that interpolate themselves into

this infrastructure suggest by trends in form, authorship, and funding that the

Black Rock Desert has become the latest testing ground for experimental

architecture and urban planning, which in turn suggests an aesthetic keyed to a

specific social and professional class. The following discussion attempts to

evidence these trends, to propose reasons why Burning Man should be so

1
Noveroske-Tritten, Linda. 2015. "Bodies At Burning Man: Heterotopia, Temporality, And
The Creative Act As Embodied Revolution". Ph.D., University of California Davis.
attractive to architects and planners, and to consider ways that Burning Man

could in turn influence architectural practice beyond the designated space and

time of the event itself.

Becoming Urban

In 1986, the event had no sheltering structures. Four years later, driven

into the desert by police restrictions, the gathering formed a circle more by

accident than by plan. That same year, the aid of the Society of Carpenters was

enlisted and a chief engineer was selected for the first time as design and

construction began to call on specialist knowledge.2 In 1991, law enforcement

interceded again, this time in the form of the Bureau of Land Management’s

demands for a rough plan of the encampments, spurring the early formation of a

municipal structure. By 1996, according to the account of one Tony “Coyote”

Perez-Banuet who would go on to become the head of the then-non-existent

Department of Public Works, three radial roads and one inner ring road had

begun to emerge.3

2
"Timeline | Burning Man". 2017. https://burningman.org/timeline/.
3
Perez-Banuet, Tony. 2017. "Clock Town".
https://journal.burningman.org/2010/06/black-rock-city/building-brc/clock-town/.
 Steve Noreyko skydiving into Burning Man, 19964

In 1999 the alternative newspaper Piss Clear (distributed at Burning Man

between the years of 1995 and 2007) ran a fragmentary column entitled “I

remember when…” including items such as “…you could burn your own art

without having to ask for permission;” “…you couldn’t see Black Rock City from

the highway;” and “…Burning Man was the Theme Camp,”5 all pointing to

increasing regulation, size, and variety of built forms.6 2010 was a pivotal year

both for the evolution of the event’s infrastructure and for its awareness that that

infrastructure was essentially city-like in character. That year the event’s overall

theme was “Metropol,” and the attendance just exceeded 50,000, which

coincidentally is also the U.S. Census’s threshold for qualifying as an urbanized

area. It was a ripe moment for architects and urban planners to turn their

4
"Burning Man 1991-1996". 2017. Burn.Life. Accessed May 5.
http://www.burn.life/1991-1996-hypergrowth.html.
5
Roberts, Adrian. 2009. Burning Man Live. 1st ed. San Francisco, CA: RE/Search
Publications. pp. 70
6
The term “theme camps” refers to a class of structures at Burning Man that serve both
as residence for a small group of people and as interactive/occupiable art for the
broader population.
attentions to this budding intentional community that so resembled a temporary

city, “Black Rock City,” if they had not done so already.

This evolution from informal gathering to urban microcosm was not

purely emergent, nor is it unique in the history of city planning. It may well be

that in 1990 a circle was formed around the eponymous “Man” in imitation of

“the traditional campfire circle and the urge to ‘circle the wagons’ against the

nearly boundless space,”7 and perhaps the primacy of this “urge” partly

contributes to the present horseshoe-plan’s resemblance of Ebenezer Howard’s

Garden Cities and other utopian radial plans. However, it was for more

contemporary, pragmatic reasons that Burning Man went from a relative “design

free-for-all”8 to the well-ordered polar grid it is today. Rod Garrett was brought

onboard the Burning Man organization as chief engineer in 1997, the same year

that the Department of Public Works appeared. The birth of the DPW and

Garrett’s recruitment were not unrelated; that year the Burning Man event was

moved from the federal land of the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach, Nevada, to

private land, coming under the jurisdiction of Washoe County. As such, its

organizers were held accountable for waste management, nighttime lighting of

the camp, and producing a formal plan of the city itself. While some demands

were mitigated following negotiations, the product of these bureaucratic

pressures was that Rod Garrett, a landscape architect of 30 years’ experience,

was commissioned to give Black Rock City its shape. That shape, which today

7
Garrett, Rod. 2017. "Designing Black Rock City". Burning Man Journal.
https://journal.burningman.org/2010/04/black-rock-city/building-brc/designing-black-roc
k-city/.
8
Bernstein, Fred. 2017. "Learning From Black Rock". Architect Magazine.
http://www.architectmagazine.com/design/learning-from-black-rock_o.
resembles a giant horseshoe arc of about 240 degrees, was no coincidence,

either. Due to last-minute changes in land availability, the 1997 settlement was

squeezed into a curved tract of land, forcing it into a bowed shape that only after

the fact would be received on a conceptual level as a physical manifestation of

Burning Man’s foundational social principles.9 The city’s zoning, which now

treats issues of community inclusion, positive signage, navigability, health and

safety, and even noise levels, is not only practical, but also shares a

considerable amount with the ideals of the professional urban planning

community.10 Even the ban on private transportation, with the exception of

hybrid art-project “mutant vehicles,” has been likened to the tenets of New

Urbanism,11 contributing to Burning Man’s reputation as an experiment in radical

urban design. As a result of this event’s annual renewal, its designer was

afforded the opportunity to change Burning Man’s plan to test not just one, but

various social and planning ideologies on a living community. While it may

appear radical, it is in fact derivative of other radicalisms, making it, in one

sense, conventional.

9
Garrett
10
“Variously-sized theme camps are placed based on three criteria: ability to attract
participants, capacity for interaction, and a demonstrated willingness to meet deadlines.
Theme camps featuring large sound systems are sited along the outermost corridors,
facing open space for noise mitigation. This may have a historical connection to the first
“sound camps” being located separately from the camping area before the firming up of
the city plan. Kidsville, a theme camp created for participants with children, maintains
boundaries within which no mature content is permitted, and provides shared childcare
and play spaces.” Rohrmeier, Kerry D. 2012. "Welcome To Black Rock City: Ephemeral
Homes, Built Environments, And Participatory Negotiations". Berkeley Planning Journal
25 (1). pp. 88
11
Bernstein, Fred. 2017. "Rod Garrett, The Urban Planner Behind ‘Burning Man’".
Nytimes.Com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/arts/rod-garrett-the-urban-planner-behind-burning
-man.html.
 Becoming “Architecture”

In parallel with this mounting resemblance of a city, architecture at

Burning Man has established its own aesthetic, one based on the notion of the

pavilion and the current paradigm in industrial prototyping. It is difficult to

comprehensively categorize the structures that appear at the event, in part

because the vast majority are based on “self-provided” designs.12 In fact, little

regulation exists regarding private structures, so the architecture of Burning Man

consists of a vernacular shaped by environmental necessity and, beyond this,

individual taste. Burning Man is held on a playa with no existing plumbing or

electrical infrastructure, highly alkaline dust, and winds in excess of 50 miles per

hour: what is not provided by the Department of Public Works must be carried to

the site by individuals and carried off at the conclusion of the event. Building

even adequate shelters is a challenge, prior to the application of ornament or

other forms of expression. As there is no requirement that shelters be the

product of elaborate or innovative ideas, yurts, tents, and recreational vehicles

are a recurring staple of the sprawling city. For example, an orange-and-white

tent sporting a pirate flag comprised the most elaborate shelter at the first desert

“Burn” in 1990.13 By contrast, the criteria for Burning Man Honoraria, the special

art grants given for built installations, today expressly excludes such basic

temporary structures, leading one to ask what kinds of structures do enjoy this

status as “art”—i.e., what is “Architecture” with a capital “A” at Burning Man?

12
Rohrmeier, 86
13
"Timeline | Burning Man"
 The first desert Burn, ca. 199014

According to the publicity that certain installations have received, it is at

least possible to get some sense of what has been new and interesting from

year to year. On the one hand, some of this is ironic form, and should not be

taken as expressing any kind of ideal. Consider for instance Chris Hankins’s

“Megatropolis,” installed during 2010’s event as a critique of urban morphology,

pictured below.

14
Segal, P. 2014. "The City That Was: Cacophony Zone Trip #4 (Burning Man's First
Time In The Desert)". Broke-Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website.
http://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2014/08/27/the-city-that-was-cacophony-zone-trip-4/.
On the other hand, some design is intended more sincerely. The so-called

“Vertical Camp” is described by contributor “Tyronus”15 as challenging “the

dominant land-use patterns that exist at Burning Man” by building upward

instead of outward, using recycled scaffolding and fabric partitions to create a

stacked configuration of private apartments.16

Vertical Camp, 201017

15
Some authors publishing works regarding Burning Man choose to give only their
“playa name,” so as to keep their everyday identities distinct from the event.
16
"Vertical Camp: Creative Urbanism". 2017. Burning Man Journal.
https://journal.burningman.org/2010/08/black-rock-city/building-brc/vertical-camp-creat
ive-urbanism/.
17
Glade, Philippe. 2016. Black Rock City, NV. 1st ed. San Francisco, CA: Real Paper
Books.
Since first appearing in 2005, each year the camp’s design has maintained

novelty by rearranging its modular elements. Of course, such novelty is purely

formal. The underlying idea of urban infill through verticality is closely related to

New Urbanism’s espousal of dense city centers, an ideology of which the

designers were probably well aware; Tyronus is a recipient of a Masters Degree

in Urban Planning, and his collaborators are professionals in planning, design,

and real-estate. This begins to hint at a deeper trend in authorship.

As early as 2003, “LadyBee” (a.k.a. Christine Kristen) critiqued the notion

that the works found at Burning Man could be termed “outsider art,” objecting,

“some of our artists do have degrees from art schools, exhibition histories and

art careers.”18 In the same article, Burning Man sculptor Larnie Fox is quoted as

claiming that the “art movement” of which Burning Man is a part “is a movement

away from a dialogue between an individual artist and a sophisticated

audience… away from galleries, schools and other institutions and towards an

art produced in and for casual groups.” This vision fails to foresee the ultimate

re-inclusion of “last year’s avant garde” among “high art,” a cycle that Denise

Scott Brown explicates in Learning from Pop.19

Indeed, there is a fundamental tension between structures aware of their

own capacity to be read as architectural, and those that reject such readings or

are oblivious to them. Curations of Burning Man art can furnish some examples.

One such curation is the “Top 20 Art Picks of BRC,” a list compiled by “MOZE”

18
Bee, Lady. 2003. "The Outsider Art Of Burning Man". Leonardo 36 (5): 343-348.
doi:10.1162/002409403771048137. pp. 343
19
Brown, Denise Scott. 1973. "Learning From Pop". The Journal Of Popular Culture VII
(2): 387-401. doi:10.1111/j.0022-3840.1973.0702_387.x. pp. 391/13
and published in the 2004 edition of Piss Clear. It lauds works such as “Serpent

Mother” by “the Flaming Lotus Girls,” making a point of its impressive

pyrotechnics; “Burninator II” by Bill Codding, simply a sequence of enormous

flaming towers; and “El Diablo” by Jack Schroll, a “military jet turbine that

projects colored flames. Nuff said.” These are from the first half of MOZE’s list,

which he differentiates from the second half subtitled “Beautiful and Sublime.”

This latter list retains a fascination with fire, but we cannot ignore that MOZE

seems to notice the same distinction that we have between art for effect and art

in pursuit of an ideal, notwithstanding the author’s flat disclaimer, “I don’t really

know anything about Art [sic].” Then, is “beautiful” or “sublime” the ideal? Even

for the editors, the consensus on what constitutes the “best” art on the playa

would change through time. The foreword to the 2006 edition in the unabridged

compilation of Piss Clear devotes its first paragraph to lamenting MOZE’s failure

to include the “now-legendary Uchronia" in his list. Claiming it to have been “the

biggest, most massive art installation ever to be erected in Black Rock City,” the

retrospective inclusion sets an expectation that good art should be large,

elaborate, and expensive. Since large-scale projects in general require more

resources, and thus require planning beyond the abilities of most lay designers,

this aesthetic heuristic tends to treat more consciously architectural projects as

ideal.20

20
Roberts, 248-53
 “Uchronia,” 2006

Perhaps this helps to explain why more mainstream publications like

Architect Magazine and Dezeen™, among dozens of others, have begun to run

stories about the art of Burning Man. These stories themselves are engaged in a

curatorial project, as their authors implicitly suggest a set of ideals with regard to

built form. Meanwhile, the growing prevalence of such stories suggests the

increasing availability of examples of Burning Man art that qualifies as

“architecture,” even to architects. For example, a Dezeen article titled simply

“The best temporary structures from Burning Man festival 2016” features the

“Catacomb of Veils” by Dan Sullivan and the Catacomb Crew, pictured below.21

21
Howarth, Dan. 2016. "The Best Temporary Structures From Burning Man 2016".
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/09/02/best-temporary-structures-burning-man-2016-hig
hlights-photographs-pieterjan-mattan/.
The largest art piece at the event in 2016, at 220 feet across and 19,000 square

feet in area, it was conceived by a group experienced in building large “temples”

at Burning Man in previous years. Its design relied on standard architectural

tools like the Rhinoceros 3D software.22 Another item in the list of just four

projects is “Tangential Dreams” by Arthur Mamou-Mani, accompanied by a brief

description noting its algorithmic design, a trait that puts it squarely in the

architectural vogue of the 2010s. Structures such as these tend to resemble

traditional architectural pavilions both in interactivity and size, although there

exists no mandate that they should.23 As one journalist in attendance at the 2010

event observed, “organizers have avoided making rules about behavior (for the

most part) and instead have encouraged civic and community activities that

22
Sullivan, Dan. 2017. "Catacomb Of Veils - Burning Man 2016". Indiegogo.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/catacomb-of-veils-burning-man-2016#/.
23
Since the term “pavilion” itself is an ambiguous term, originally referring simply to large
tents, it should be read in this context as characterizing small, temporary, playful,
non-pragmatic, and/or absurd structures inserted into a landscape. As evidence of this
usage, consider the article “Digitally Crafted, Crowdfunded Pavilions” that explicitly
associates this term with the structures typical of Burning Man. Mamou-Mani, Arthur,
and Toby Burgess. 2015. "Entrepreneur Makers: Digitally Crafted, Crowdfunded
Pavilions". Architectural Design 85 (3): 130-135. doi:10.1002/ad.1912.
align with the ethic of the event,”24 and here “behavior” might be seen as

encompassing aesthetic. Nonetheless, publicity suggests that such pavilions are

becoming a norm at Burning Man.

Hayam Sun Temple, Josh Haywood, 2014

A separate article under the same publication chooses as its subject a

more explicit collaboration between the world of architecture and that of Burning

Man: the “Hayam Sun Temple” by Josh Haywood.25 Haywood created the

project, which is “the product of extensive research into Islamic geometry… and

the parametric digitalisation [sic] of these geometries,” as a student at

Westminster University through his degree program. Although it is described as

a temple, its scale and lack of enclosure or specific function justify its being

termed a “pavilion” in the article. Although Haywood’s application for a Burning

Man Honoraria grant was unaffiliated with Westminster, he is not unique among

24
Berg, Nate. 2017. "Burning Man And The Metropolis".
https://placesjournal.org/article/burning-man-and-the-metropolis/.
25
Winston, Anna. 2014. "Josh Haywood Creates Temporary "Temple" For Burning Man
Festival".
https://www.dezeen.com/2014/07/02/hayam-temple-by-josh-haywood-for-burning-man
-festival/.
his peers; in fact, the course “Diploma Studio 10” taught by Arthur Mamou-Mani

and Toby Burgess at the university has for several years been encouraging its

students to apply parametric design and digital fabrication to proposals for

Burning Man. The program saw the realization of three student projects in the

Black Rock Desert at the 2013 event alone.26 This distinctive design-build

curriculum is a response, according to Mamou-Mani and Burgess, to emerging

digital design skillsets and the economic climate that a new generation of

architects stand to inherit.

Un-becoming Commissioned Work

The politics of art funding are of special interest in an environment

espousing the principles of decommodification and a gift economy.27 It may

come as a surprise that the 2006 Piss Clear ranted against supporting Playa art

with Burning Man’s own funds, but in fact this was partly why its editors admired

the project “Uchronia" (or the “Belgian Waffle” as it was known in Playa parlance

that year).28 They point out that this project represented one of the early cases of

an organization unaffiliated with Burning Man independently funding one of the

event’s largest installations. Indeed, the project bears its nickname in reference

to the Belgian company that put $400,000 toward its construction for the sake of

“employee morale-building.”29 By contrast, the Burning Man organization’s art

26
Mamou-Mani and Burgess, 135
27
These are among the central philosophical tenets outlined by event founder Larry
Harvey. "The 10 Principles Of Burning Man | Burning Man". 2017. Burningman.Org.
https://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/.
28
Roberts, 253
29
Roberts, 248
grants known as “Black Rock City Honoraria” have totaled about a quarter of a

million dollars each year since 2001.30 In Burning Man’s earlier years such

patronage might have exerted considerable influence on the event’s overall

aesthetic, but as outsider resources have grown while restrictions on built form

have remained few, increasingly ambitious projects have begun to materialize.

Even those projects that do receive funding from the Burning Man organization

often go on to supplement that allowance by their own fundraising efforts. The

Catacomb of Veils was such a project; on crowdfunding site indiegogo.com, as

of May 2017 it had raised $68,012 of a stated goal of $90,000. It is still

accepting backing.31

Partly, this is reflective of economic necessity. Mamou-Mani and Burgess

state in their article “Digitally Crafted, Crowdfunded Pavilions” that they

encourage their students to engage in “writing funding applications… and

crowdfunding their projects,” citing the employment challenges they themselves

faced following the 2008 financial crisis.32 However, there is also the factor of

design agency to consider. The authors point out that crowdfunding, by

saturating the client base of a project with often hundreds or thousands of

donors, means that “paradoxically designers retain more ownership and room

for creative expression” since they are responsible for producing their own

proposal instead of simply “responding to the brief of a single client.”33 If this

30
"Afterburn Reports | Burning Man". 2017. Burningman.Org.
https://burningman.org/culture/history/brc-history/afterburn/.
31
Sullivan
32
Mamou-Mani and Burgess, 135
33
Ibid.
form of practice is particularly suited to Burning Man, it is no wonder, then, that

the event is so attractive to self-driven young designers.

The allure of relying on crowdfunding and volunteer labor in order to

realize projects with greater individual liberty has consequences for aesthetic,

too. Mamou-Mani and Burgess emphasize the convenience of access to CNC

milling, laser cutting, and 3d printing technology made possible through the

proliferation of maker spaces; however, if this change in technological skillset

enables rapid-prototyping, it is through reliance on modular forms and typically

pre-processed media that are restricted in size, shape, and material, as can be

registered from the two Diploma Studio 10 projects pictured below.

Joe Leach, Proposed Burning Man Temple, 201334

34
In this temple design, “the size of the module is defined by the standard plywood
sheet size.” Mamou-Mani and Burgess, 131
 Volunteer assembly of the modular “Fractal Cult” installation35

In this respect, the Uchronia example set an early precedent, being composed

entirely of modular timber pieces. It is a precedent countless other projects have

followed, a pattern which might even be considered predictable.

Conclusion

Burning Man is an architect’s anti-heroic dream city. While definitely not

so radical as some have supposed, it does realize—with not a trivial degree of

success—actual examples of well-known architectural and urban ideals.

Moreover, though its architecture does not constitute true outsider art, it

provides a site for architects who are, or feel themselves to be, outsiders in their

own field. It is adaptable, renewing itself each year; self-commissioned,

reflecting tastes unmitigated by a client brief; and reproducible, relying on forms

and skillsets familiar to most contemporary architects. As such, it stands today

as a model for one possible future: a future in which it is not form or theory that

35
Ibid. 134
is the first to innovate design, but rather the fundamental economic, creative,

and physical modes of architectural practice.

 References

"Afterburn Reports | Burning Man". 2017. Burningman.Org.

https://burningman.org/culture/history/brc-history/afterburn/.

Bee, Lady. 2003. "The Outsider Art Of Burning Man". Leonardo 36 (5): 343-348.
doi:10.1162/002409403771048137.

Berg, Nate. 2017. "Burning Man And The Metropolis".

https://placesjournal.org/article/burning-man-and-the-metropolis/.

Bernstein, Fred. 2017. "Learning From Black Rock". Architect Magazine.

http://www.architectmagazine.com/design/learning-from-black-rock_o.

Bernstein, Fred. 2017. "Rod Garrett, The Urban Planner Behind ‘Burning Man’".
Nytimes.Com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/arts/rod-garrett-the-urban-planner-b
ehind-burning-man.html.

Brown, Denise Scott. 1973. "Learning From Pop". The Journal Of Popular
Culture VII (2): 387-401. doi:10.1111/j.0022-3840.1973.0702_387.x.

"Burning Man 1991-1996". 2017. Burn.Life. Accessed May 5.

http://www.burn.life/1991-1996-hypergrowth.html.

Garrett, Rod. 2017. "Designing Black Rock City". Burning Man Journal.
https://journal.burningman.org/2010/04/black-rock-city/building-brc/desig
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Glade, Philippe. 2016. Black Rock City, NV. 1st ed. San Francisco, CA: Real
Paper Books.

Howarth, Dan. 2014. "The Best Temporary Structures From Burning Man 2016".
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/09/02/best-temporary-structures-burning-
man-2016-highlights-photographs-pieterjan-mattan/.

Mamou-Mani, Arthur, and Toby Burgess. 2015. "Entrepreneur Makers: Digitally

Crafted, Crowdfunded Pavilions". Architectural Design 85 (3): 130-135.
doi:10.1002/ad.1912.

Noveroske-Tritten, Linda. 2015. "Bodies At Burning Man: Heterotopia,

Temporality, And The Creative Act As Embodied Revolution". Ph.D.,
University of California Davis.

Perez-Banuet, Tony. 2017. "Clock Town".

https://journal.burningman.org/2010/06/black-rock-city/building-brc/clock
-town/.
Roberts, Adrian. 2009. Burning Man Live. 1st ed. San Francisco, CA: RE/Search
Publications.

Rohrmeier, Kerry D. 2012. "Welcome To Black Rock City: Ephemeral Homes,

Built Environments, And Participatory Negotiations". Berkeley Planning
Journal 25 (1).

Segal, P. 2014. "The City That Was: Cacophony Zone Trip #4 (Burning Man's
First Time In The Desert)". Broke-Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website.
http://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2014/08/27/the-city-that-was-cacophony-
zone-trip-4/.

Sullivan, Dan. 2017. "Catacomb Of Veils - Burning Man 2016". Indiegogo.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/catacomb-of-veils-burning-man-201
6#/.

"The 10 Principles Of Burning Man | Burning Man". 2017. Burningman.Org.

https://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/.

"Timeline | Burning Man". 2017. Burningman.Org.

https://burningman.org/timeline/.

"Vertical Camp: Creative Urbanism". 2017. Burning Man Journal.

https://journal.burningman.org/2010/08/black-rock-city/building-brc/vertic
al-camp-creative-urbanism/.

Winston, Anna. 2014. "Josh Haywood Creates Temporary "Temple" For Burning
Man Festival".
https://www.dezeen.com/2014/07/02/hayam-temple-by-josh-haywood-for
-burning-man-festival/.