Pod Mahal, Burning Man ’18

Collaboration with: Freeman Murray
Location: Esplanade (3:30), Burning Man Festival, Nevada Typology: Housing, urban intervention

Front view of the Pod Mahal, showing public spaces between hexagonal stacks of units. Source: This Is Black Rock City.

Context

Ephemeral architecture has always been an interest of mine, and I consider myself lucky to have taken part in the design of something that’s been built at the biggest, most culturally significant expression of that ephemerality, Burning Man Festival.

I did this project remotely, with Freeman being in California and me being at home in Gurgaon. In many ways, this was a continuation of our work on The Singularity.

Disorient is a camp that’s been at Burning Man for over twenty years, and has gained prominence and visibility at the festival over time. It gets placed at the Esplanade regularly, the front-most ring of camps in Black Rock City — a position it has earned over time.

Visit the Disorient camp website.

Disorient’s 250 by 500-foot plot is the pink spot in the plan. Sometimes the sheer scale of the festival can be hard to grasp. Sources: Burning Man Journal and Disorient.

On the left are RVs; on the right are tarpaulin covers for tents. Between them is our intervention, the Chand Baori and Pod Mahal. Underlay source: Disorient.

The housing situation

There are two typical solutions for shelter at Burning Man: tents and RVs. While tents have a hard time coping with the intense winds at Black Rock City, RVs guzzle fuel and are too expensive for many campers.

Freeman has been building with pallet racks at Burning Man for a long time. They’re tested by industry to carry heavy loads, go up in a jiffy, and pack into shipping containers — perfect for the festival’s “leave no trace” principle.

We created a stackable hexagonal unit that could combine density and height.

We created stackable hexagonal units and explored how to achieve density with them. For the first few versions we used two storeys, ending with three.

Approach

We designed two rows of pods facing each other, which created a cosy semi-public space between them. One of the biggest challenges was making sure the design didn’t topple. While pallet racks have long been used in industrial settings and have a well-known safety record, we decided to hold the structure down with anchors to be extra safe.

Facing rows of pods created an intimate public space between them.

We used several levels between the rows, making the gap both circulation and public space.

Combining the old and the new

Freeman and I collaborated on a structure called Chand Baori for Burning Man ’17. It provided platforms at several levels for looking out at the festival. We combined the two designs, with Chand Baori moving into a somewhat more public space while remaining more private than the open playa.

The Chand Baori from the ’17 structure plugged straight into our ’18 Pod Mahal proposal.

The Chand Baori, built at Burning Man ’17 and expanded in ’18. The structure is a public space inspired by Indian stepwells. Source: Disorient.

Overview showing the two structures meshing into each other. Source: Luther Bryan Cowden.

Looking back

The structure was received well, and there were plans to use the model at Youtopia, San Diego’s regional Burning Man event. This was by far the largest architecture project I had worked on, and I felt I had started to understand what pallet racks could achieve as a building material.

I looked forward to what I could do next. One pet project in my mind was the Eudaimonia Machine. I felt I had built a niche for myself: very few people in the world knew how to work with this, so I was open for commissions.

Communal use of public space between two rows of units on the Pod Mahal. Source: This Is Black Rock City.