EVENT_ARCHITECTURE : ENACTING SPATIAL EXOTOPY IN THE LIMINAL ENVIRONMENT OF BURNING MAN

Abstract

The Temple burns on Sunday, signaling the demise of an annual event that occurs on a dried-out lakebed in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Permeated with impermanence, Burning Man gathers 70,000 people with a desire to belong—to a place, a time, to one another, and to a phenomenon that is greater than us. The pilgrimage to the desert begins the rite to sacred liminality—a state of transition fortified as you gain distance from social hierarchies and dwell where no objective or subjective structures survive. This thesis explores Burning Man principles, including radical self-expression, self-reliance, and immediacy by designing wearable structures that facilitate profound re-orientations in time and space to culminate in Exotopy -- a gestalt of remarkable interactions, narratives, and of people encapsulated in the event architecture of life.