Burning Man Shading Structure Design

Building on my earlier experiments with Voronoi patterns and attractor points, I redesigned my Burning Man Pavilion. The previous form was not deliberate so much as it was just a shape to experiment the manipulation of a pattern. This new design emerges from the ground, more directly relating the “cracked mud” design back to nature.

Above, the changing position of the sun shows the variation in openings in the pavilion.

Using the same process as before, the Voronoi pattern was applied.  The success in this iteration, however, was getting the openings in the pattern to respond to the passing sun above. Below, a series of larger than/smaller than components and culled lists provided me with the right data to respond to the sun based on distance line from the center of each cell to the point of the sun.

A Karamba analysis shows the portion of the design that would actually be formed like a gridshell. A containing beam around the perimeter would be hidden in the ground, with the Voronoi “bubble” emerging from below. Treating each of the pattern lines as a beam and them loading it with gravity and linear loads shows the strength and rigidity of the shape – particularly in the containing “beam” around the perimeter.