Black Rock City, Nevada, USA
American Prize for Architecture laureates Form4 Architecture was invited by the Burning Man Organization to create a monument based on rich and lyrical symbolism for the Man Base Pavilion.
In the realm of humankind, most journeys begin with a destination. There is a fixed plan, a schedule, an itinerary. The architects move at a logical pace.
If history has taught us anything, it is that Metamorphoses, true change, and transformation follow a path of mystery and ambiguity, it can rarely be predicted how and when the change will occur, it will most certainly not follow a linear path, and the outcome can be just as unpredictable.
This design suggests an experience symbolizing the nature of Metamorphoses, of transformation, following a path of mystery and ambiguity.
The project has been awarded a 2021 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
There is a village that surrounds both sides of The Man, within which there are eight workshops, workshops that focus on transformation, on how the world might progress if we made the effort Five concepts are interwoven to create the central structure, loosely based on Ovid’s tales from 8 AD.
The first takes the form of two heroic wings, you might start to imagine a butterfly, but the wings, while clearly suggestive of flight, are not exactly the pure form of a butterfly; there is ambiguity, it could also be a bird, or a flying fish, or the wings of Icarus, a symbol of Man’s passion and arrogance.
The second is expressed by a large blue sphere, which symbolizes the earth and all the potential our time on this planet represents.
Within this sphere are seven levels, each level affords a different artist the opportunity to tell a story about Metamorphoses.
The third presents the figure of two large arms, which seem to be holding up the globe, almost offering it to the heavens, it is an adaptation of Ovid’s dark tale of Apollo pursuing Daphne, with the intention of raping her, wherein the gods take pity on Daphne and turn her into a tree.
These hands now allude to a re-greening of the earth, a hope for a better planet.
The fourth is represented by the Golden Cage that surrounds the Man himself.
The cage represents the internal and external forces that keep us from realizing our potential as human beings.
On Burn Night, the Golden Cage will fall away, freeing the Man from its earthly constraints.
At the same time, Man’s arms would rise and extend, and an LED and cloth cape would descend, thus completing its symbolic metamorphosis. The last concept involves the power of the human heart.
At the top of the globe, right under the Man, there is a platform with an inlaid one-way mirror, in the shape of a heart, “and if you get down on your knees, and look intensely into that heart, you can see the whole universe. This is your universe, this your heart, and you know, at that moment, this is where you belong.”
Project: The Golden Cage
Architects: Form4 Architecture
Client: Burning Man Project
Renderings: John Marx and Downtown
