Honorarium Granted! - Burning Man 2012

Zonotopia and the Two Trees

concept by Rob Bell

I'm very happy to announce that our Art Grant proposal for Zonotopia 2012 has been accepted and for the first time we are receiving Honorarium status as well as financial support from Burning Man!  

This is great and welcome news. On the Burning Man website you can read:

"Every year Burning Man allocates a percentage of its revenue from ticket sales to funding select art projects that are collaborative, community-oriented and interactive. We do this in order to support the Burning Man art community, and to facilitate the creation of outstanding art for Black Rock City."

The entire Zonotopia crew is immensely excited to be given the support and resources to help create an amazing experience on the playa in 2012. Thank you to everyone who has supported this project these past three years. And thank you to our supporters at Black Rock City.

In 2012 the Burning Man Theme is Fertility 2.0

...from the Burning Man website:


"Black Rock City is a kind of Petri dish. Theme camps cling in fertile clusters to its latticework of streets, artworks tumble out of it, like pollen on the air. These nodes of interaction mutate, grow and reproduce their kind. Burning Man communities have now escaped this capsule world: our culture in a Petri dish has effloresced - it spreads across five continents. This year's art theme contemplates the tendency of any being or living system to create abundant life."

...or living system to create abundant life.

As some know, the Zomes such as I design them have two fundamental influences. The first being, the famous, Buckminster Fuller, who through his unprecedented impetuousness thought that he could change the world and actually did. The second is architect Christopher Alexander, author of "A Pattern Language". Where Fuller aspired to house all the peoples of the earth in shining aluminum domes and factory produced Dymaxion homes emphasizing minimum inventory with maximum volume, Alexander espoused essentially the opposite. 

Fuller's vision

To Christopher Alexander, shelter, community and society are all deconstruct-able into patterns of design each of which, for better or worse, shapes the quality of experience for everyone at all levels...be it from the quality and quantity of parks and waterways in your neighborhood to whether or not your child has a secret hiding cave under the stairs. It is this aesthetic quality of design and the science of applying that design that Alexander cares about. In his trilogy called "The Nature of Order", each titled "The Phenomenon of Life",  "The Process of Creating Life" and "A Vision of a Living World", he declares and defines the concept that the terms Life and Living apply to created objects as much as to animate entities. That is to say that when a thing is designed well and intentionally with the same principals observed in nature such as levels of scale, slightly off center, self similarity, etc..., then that thing begins to become alive for all intents and purposes.

 

Alexander's vision

Many of my design decisions for the Zomes are based on my interpretations of Alexander's aesthetic and how one might increase this "livingness" of a structure. I'm not always able to quantify how or why this works but it certainly seems to.

All of the Zomes of Zonotopia will return to the playa in 2012 with some exciting new additions.

The Original Bodhisattva Zome will return to the playa for the fourth time.

The 2010 Zonotopia Zome will return to the playa for the third time.

The Miracula Mirabilis will return with more parts to spiral even higher into the sky.

..and two new Eight Frequency Zomes known as the Twins will make their Burning Man debut


All of the Zomes will create a circular courtyard the center piece of which are two giant zonohedral trees. 

Plan view of Zonotopia and the Two Trees 
(concept by Rob Bell)




Here's an excerpt from our proposal...


The Zomes of Zonotopia are jewel like structures carved from wood which seemingly have sprouted from the playa.  Each provides a beautiful well crafted sanctuary in which people can interact, contemplate and meditate. Each zome provides a different experience of space and enclosure.


Zomes are structural forms which create a magical quality of experience to the participants.  Derived from three dimensional projections of higher dimensional cubes, these structures embody a deep mathematical and geometric expression.


In keeping with the theme Fertility 2.0, this year in addition to the return of the Zomes of Zonotopia, which will be arranged in a circular pattern 70' in radius forming a central courtyard, there will be two dynamically illuminated zonotopal trees. The Two Trees of Zonotopia.

The Two Trees of Zonotopia


These two Trees represent the nature of Duality. One of the Trees represents the feminine and one represents the masculine. Gold and Silver respectively each tree is two parts of a Unity which thru their respective fecundity and fertility represent the sexual nature of Fertility and reproduction.


Lighting!!!


One of the most exciting new features to this years design will be improved lighting. In the past, Zonotopia has been somewhat sublime regarding night time lighting effects. This year, while we intend to again fully take advantage of our great successes with Wildfire blacklight paint and UV LED blacklights, we also intend to design, fabricate and program a number of highly dynamic and possibly interactive lighting experiences. 

If you like what you see and you'd like to see more, please stay tuned for more details of this project as it progresses and to learn how you can be a part of bringing this manifest vision of zonotopal architecture to the playa!

zome mani padme zome

-Rob Bell

Zonotopia 2011 : Hi Resolution Desktop Image

The first of our fundraising perks for Zonotopia at Burningman 2011 is ready for distribution. It is our high res desktop image. This image is available to everyone who contributed . Thank you everyone.

To download the hi res image of Zonotopia 2011

Zonotopia 2011 Hi Res  <----  right click link and save as

Zonotopia: The Once and Future Utopia of Zomes

photo by Kat Parry

Thank you one and all for making Zonotopia possible and great.

zome mani padme zome
Rob Bell

Zonotopia, The Once and Future Utopia of Zomes

Miracula Mirabilis

The Twelfth Wonder of Zonotopia

Burning Man 2011

 This year I had the amazing good fortune of having the best build team at Burning Man. We were ten minds, ten hearts and twenty hands strong. Each and every member, five women and five men, focused all of their unwavering strength and efforts for three days under grueling conditions to create this manifest vision of zonotopal architecture.

 

On a hot Friday morning at 10am, August 26th we were placed and began building in beautiful proximity to this years spectacular Temple.

 We began by building the every charming Bodhisattva Zome, this for the eleventh time.

Before sunset on the first day both the Bodhisattva Zome and the 2010 Zonotopia Zome were fully erected and the Mirabilis was begun.

One Hundred Twenty Five panels and connectors, organized and ready to go.

 

For three days, we worked all day and into the evening.

 

And here we see a typical example of the women industriously hard at work while the men stand around not doing much of anything.

Here Zonotopians, Jeff and Val limber up during the build.

 Almost all of Zonotopia is assembled using only scaffolding, ladders, mallets and muscle.

For the topmost rhombs, Art Support provided an appropriately blue boom lift assistance.

 

And on Monday, Complete! A remarkable wonder, the Miracula Mirabilis brought three new design elements to Zonotopia: a new upward spiralling, helical shell....

 

...,a indigo color design which faded down to white, and most importantly of all....

 

 ...Climbability! As many can attest, it was solid and fun 5.0 wonderland!

 

 There are few things better in life than climbing your own art piece at Burning Man!

 

 Each Zome provided a different visage and experience to all playa travellers.

 On Wednesday night, we hosted our third Annual Zome Party with Mission Country Club. There was great music and ...

 ....fire spinning in the Zomes.

 

At long last, Patricia got her life long wish to chill in her hammock in a Zome.

The fade to blue portals garnered no shortage of compliments throughout the event. And as predicted, there was always one row of panels which perfectly matched the sky.

The Mirabilis came out at 25', just a bit taller than the 2010 Zonotopia Zome.

Intergalactic Zonotopians, Star Tiger and Sunshine stop by to admire the construction of their wedding chapel.

The Mirabilis at night, illuminated from within.

This is Zonotopia, the Once and Future Utopia of Zomes.

A giant Zome shaped Thank you goes to...

...The Zonotopia Crew

Sergio, Megan, Jeff, Val, Audrey, Ian, Stephanie, Earl, Patricia and Rob.

special thanks to

Mission Country Club

Dark Sevier

Mad Dog

Our Indiegogo Contributors

The Artery

Art Support

and Burning Man.

zome mani padme zome

-Rob Bell

Pecha Kucha : The Geometry of Desire

Coinciding with the ending of our Zonotopia fundraiser was a Pecha Kucha event which emphasized Burningman projects so I took the opportunity to tell the story of Zonotopia.  The theme was Desire.  It was a great time and everyone laughed in all the right places.

The Geometry of Desire

In 2005, I was working as a software engineer. It was then that I began a journey into the world of zonotopal architecture. Here are a few of the paper models I built to begin educating myself in the structural systems of space.

To manifest a desire one should state an intention. In 2006 I started a fabrication studio and this model was one of the first things I cut on my cnc and it was a declaration of intention as you will soon see.

In my studies of different coordinate systems and explorations of non-rectilinear geometries I learned that computer architecture is a dangerous place were magic is easy. It's quite difficult to build something completely new in the real world and that works.

 In 2009 we built the first Zome of Zonotopia, the Bodhisattva Zome. It defines a space where people can enter and not feel enclosed, to see and to be seen. It creates a form which is compelling and beautiful or in a word... Desirable.

 And in 2010 at Burningman Zonotopia consisted of two Zomes. The original eight frequency Bodhisattva Zome and seen here a newer 20' tall twelve frequency Zome. You can determine the frequency by counting the number of petals which emanate from the center.

I call this collection of zonohedral pavilions Zonotopia: The Once and Future Utopia of Zomes,
because now that I understand how simple they are I see no reason that they could not have existed long, long ago.

As this acrobat can attest, when properly constructed Zomes are incredibly strong. All of my Zomes are built entirely with interlocking wooden fasteners and we don't burn them. They will be heading to the playa this year for the third and hopefully not the last time.

To me Zonotopia represents not only possibility of what might be but also of what once might have been. Imagine if this were only the top of an ancient larger structure. What would that structure be?

What would a would an ancient people, knowledgable and skilled in this architectural space build had they the means? And were I allowed to continue digging down to unearth it what sort of undreamt of wonders might I find?

This is how a cube may propagate a helix in 3-space. Polar Zonohedra are hyper dimensional cubes which when transformed in similar fashion create polytopes in their higher dimensions which cast volumious, helical shadows into our 3 space.

This is the design for Zonotopia 2011. A 35' tall tower I call the Miracula Mirabilis. And the fact that it can be constructed using the same panel and connectors from last years Zome even blew my mind.

Now that the design was nailed down our next task was straightforward. Raise the money. So on a rare and beautiful hot day in San Francisco we set up our Zome in Dolores Park to kick off our Indiegogo fundraiser. We set up in a little over an hour.

Unfortunately police came and shut us down almost immediately. And then, to add insult to injury we were labeled Renegade Hippies by the local Mission Blog. We may be renegades but we're no hippies.

Furthering the fundraising efforts I made this 1/8th scale model of the Miracula Mirabilis. This model and models like it are some of our donation rewards. This one is currently on dislay at Coffee Bar, just a block from my fabrication studio. 

Production is well underway. This is one unit of 1" ACX Pine. One of the great challenges on a project like this is how to minimize waste, maximize efficiency and create systems where friends and supporters can come into the shop and help.

 Our joinery systems have evolved and become more sophisticated. To the lower right is one of the new panels fresh off the cnc. The curvy connectors I call frogs and are a new design created to easily and accurately join parts together.

This is my frog editor. Not only do these forms create a positively locking joint but both positive and negative can be efficently cut in a single continuous pass. Generally something of this complexity would take too much time to be cost effective.

Based on the joinery need at hand Frogs come in many shapes and proportions. Here you see the first Legion of my Wooden Frog Army coming off the cnc and I'm making more every day...soon I will be invincible.

Zonotopia would not exist and none of this would be possible without the help and love of my friends and supporters. I'm doubly blessed to be able to manifest this madness and to have such wonderful people encouraging and helping me to do it.

If you like what you see and you'd like to see this and more of what still lies underground, I encourage you to help us with our fundraising efforts on idiegogo. I look forward to seeing you under a Zome on the playa and beyond.

Thank you one and all.