Philippe Glade is the author of old-fashioned paper book “Black Rock City, NV – the Ephemeral Architecture of Burning Man“.
On his site, thisisblackrockcity.blogspot.com , he hands out “Golden Rebar” awards to the best structures at Burning Man. 2013 features some real doozies, incuding an igloo literally made of bread.
We’ve picked our favorite three. See the complete list of 2013 winners here at Philippe’s site.
Golden Rebar Grand Prize: Metal Pods Village by Scott Parenteau
When last year Scott “Tin Man” Parenteau came for the first time to Burning Man, he became an instant celebrity on the playa with his walking pod that since brought him several awards at Maker Faire, and with his two patented metal pods used for shelter was a big draw for his neighbors.
For his second time at Black Rock City, Scott upped the ante and decided to build a village for his friends. He was able to finish his own shelter by adding the third pod, the bedroom on top of a fully operational stainless steel custom made shower and a complete kitchen.
A bedroom with a view and bamboo flooring.
Golden Rebar for Only In Black Rock City and We Want to Keep it this Way: The Dome of Dough
This Shelter was entirely made of 850 Loaves of Bread with an insulation value of R-5 and lasted the week.
Do we witness the start of a new building trend at Black Rock?
On the blackboard were some possible names: Rye Not? Flour Power, Dill Dough, Make loaves not War…
Golden Rebar for BRC Landmark: The Chiton by D’Milo Hallerberg.
Shelter and community space made of steel tubing and nylon cloth, the Chiton blurs the lines between
architectural concept and art installation, a feat few architects in the default world are capable of. It measures 21 feet high, 22 feet wide and 45 feet long.
It’s great to see the experimental architecture of Burning Man being celebrated and highlighted like this, and we appreciate Phillipe’s efforts. He must be favored by the BMOrg, since he is allowed to use their trademarked term “Black Rock City” to promote his book.
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Hello Burner.me
thank you very much for your post about my blog, this is Black Rock City.
It is a true labor of love, on site, all day long looking around for the hidden treasures, i.e, the metal pods village that was way far away from “the playa”,
and off site, meaning hundreds of hours of computer stuff.
In fact I barely set foot on the “playa” itself focusing more on the city and its inhabitants and builders that talk passionately about their camps.
As being favored by the organization, I don’t know.
Of course, after 18 years documenting the event they know my work and recognize my heavy foreign-born accent.
They appreciate my focus of interest and I am really glad about it because few,
very few people are into temporary architecture, experimental shelters and temporary urban planning. And true, if not for the moral support and encouragements of Lady Bee and Steven Raspa I would have never pursued for the last 10 years this specific body of work.
If I were to show Extremely cute and smiling burners Enjoying their Epiphanic moments on the playa I would have a hundred more times exposure and there are more talented photographers who do it better than I could.
Of course in the early stages of the process of doing (myself, in true self-reliance) the book, I approached the organization and they liked the concept, the out of the box angle (Burning Man is, as I remember, mentioned 4 times in 112 pages) and the title “Black Rock City, NV” which is more about a geographical location than the use of a trademark.
They realized that I genuinely love my city and wanted to show its exceptionalism. How many books about the architecture of a temporary 70 000 inhabitants city do you know? And don’t count on the glossy architectural/design magazines about cheap-prefab-200 000 $-Mission-district-renovation to talk about a typology of shelters for extreme conditions.
After all what is the most important thing at BRC or BM? your Shelter.
Again, thank you very much for featuring several images that I worked very hard to produce (I am not Reuters, I am cool with that), now the BMOrg must think I was favored by burner.me to get such exposure.
(ps: send my your address you just won one of the very last copies of a soon to be collector)