Zonotopia and the Two Trees

Welcome to Zonotopia!

The Two Trees of Zonotopia
Burning Man 2012

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Zonotopia and the Two Trees : Project Update Two

First build of the Silver Tree of Zonotopia was a great success!

All the parts did what they were supposed to do and right now the structure stands in the Zomadic studios like a giant Fabergé egg.

We designed and cut a temporary pedestal to support the Zome.

In no time we have something sprouting from the floor.

Everything is going together like clockwork. The tolerances are perfect! No soap or sanding required.

Another ten panels fall into place.

It's exciting to see how quickly it comes together.

Within an hour we've reached the equator.

An there's the equator. Happily we were able to spin the Zome around and around as we assembled. This saved a lot of time especially for the upper portions as we never had to re-position our ladder.

Our race to the top stalled when a couple of mis-labeled parts were discovered. Doh!

Problem identified and corrected - the build continues.

Finally at the end of the day we're at the top with inches between the top of the Zome and the ceiling. All the parts have worked beautifully together.

In the morning all the panels and top struts are in place.

The top plate ready.

And it's done. It worked!

The Silver Tree of Zonotopia standing tall.

Right after our first build I gave a slide show presentation at Prepare for the Playa. It was great to see so many friends there excited about Burningman this year and our project.

zome mani padme zome

Zonotopia and the Two Trees : Project Update One

Where does all the time go?

These past two months we've been busy here designing, planning, scheming, playing and working. Here's a recap of what's been going on .

We build the refurbished Zonotopia Zome at MakerFaire where it seemed to bring out the monkey in everyone.

Then we built the Zonotopia Zome again at Lightning In a Bottle where for the second year in a row we were the best afterparty at the event packing the Zome with DJs and dancing until the sun rose every day!

We were invited by fellow Zome enthusiast and master geometer Chris Palmer of Shadowfolds to build one of the Twins for a private party on the shores of Clear Lake, California.

And we set up one of the Twins for Mission Country Club our camp's fundraiser in San Francisco where we hosted belly dancing in the Zome - two great things that go great together!

And concurrent with all of the above we've been preparing our production cycle for Zonotopia and the Two Trees, our Burningman project this year.

Lighting!

We've been hard at work designing our new lighting effects. We've chosen a local LED design firm MaceTech for our systems. This video shows the falling rain effect we've programmed. All of the lighting effects you will see on the playa are programmed in house at the Zomadic studios. Here you see the falling rain effect programmed for the Silver Tree of the Moon.

Once we'd created an 8 x 8 grid of LEDs we began to notice some flicker in on of the columns. 

Garrett Mace of MaceTech came over to trouble shoot our problem.

In short order Garrett identified the source of the issue. See that spike at the leading edge of the square wave...not good.

Garrett then performed some magic tricks!

0.05 microFarads of course.

The spike is gone and so is the flicker. Thanks Garrett!

Production

Also all physical production of the project is happening in house. As with any new design there are no shortage of little issues which could potentially become big issues if they are not addressed early on. Once the wheels of industry start turning it requires significant effort to stop them and re-tune or re-tool. Hence the need to be triply sure that every thing is dead on correct before commencing production.

First two panels of the Silver Tree fresh off the CNC.

All of our time spent designing is really paying off. Everytime we push a new Zome thru the Zomadic Shop it gives us an opportunity to refine our systems and improve the advancement of our designs. The panels you see here are the most sophisticated Zome parts in the world.

It might have taken us a while to get the production machine running but now that we are we are producing panels and connectors at an amazing rate.

Because the Trees of Zonotopia will have an external cladding the internal framing structure is completely inset from the polar zonohedron which defines it's form. This is different from all the other Zomes we've designed and it brings with it new challenges but also significant advantages for moving Zomadic architecture in to new domains.

The new connector system, straight off the CNC.

And we are also getting fantastic yield from our sheet material.

As we cut parts we test them for quality. This weekend we are looking forward to building the entire Silver Tree sub-structure. That will be amazing as it will be the first life size full polar zonohedral structure of it's kind.

And look for us this Sunday at Prepare for the Playa were we will give a live project update and announce the launch of our fundraising campaign. Prepare for the Playa is a burner friendly event happening at Cafe Cocomo, in San Francisco, Sunday July 15th. We hope to see you there.

Stay tuned....you will see more good stuff  in the days to come.

zome mani padme zome

Production has commenced!

Sunrise in the Zonotopia Zome on the Playa in 2010

Welcome to our new members of the Zonotopia crew!

And thank you everyone who has come into the Zome studio these past two weekends to donate their time and talent. We've had some great work days in the shop with people assembling panels, routing connectors and rounding edges. The cnc tool-paths and the production systems are our best so far and we are producing quality parts in record time.

Last weekend, Sunshine assembles panels of the Zonotopia Zome.

As we proceed towards production of the Two Trees our first task is to refurbish the existing Zomes. The Zomes have seen a lot of use these past couple years both on and off playa and as one might expect, here and there, wear and tear has taken it's toll.  A refurbishment like this also provides a valuable opportunity to upgrade the Zome systems and technologies to the latest and greatest version.

In order to minimize material waste most zome panels must be broken into parts and then assembled into rhombuses. There are lots of ways to tackle this problem and with each iteration of design and production we've been able to advance  and refine our techniques.

One of the greatest challenges is devising a system in which virtually anyone, with minimal building experience, can come into the studio, and be immediately productive building quality parts safely and quickly. Last year during the construction of the Miracula Mirabilis panels we utilized a type of joinery I refer to as Frog Joints.

A legion of the 2011 Zomadic Frog Army.

Frog Joints are a style of mortise and tenon which is based on the idea that if one follows the geometry indicated by the close packing of circles, one may quickly create positive and negative parts. For the Mirabilis panels the tenon or frog was a single part and the mortise was cut into two edges of each panel part. 

The Frog Joint Editor - to the right is the Frog Joint profile.

The frog was then glued, hammered and pin nailed into place. The system worked great in all respects and was at the time our best production run yet.

A happy Zonotopian hammering Frogs in 2011.

This year this idea is becoming even more sophisticated.  Now we are using a system called the Lapped Frog. This time the half-frog tenon, and the half-frog mortise and one and the same. All parts are cut with a single tool on the cnc machine. This has been a tricky system to perfect but now that we have we've significantly reduced our panel production time.

A row of panels with Lapped Frogs ready or assembly.

Not only is this system the fastest and the most foolproof so far - but the resultant panel is the strongest ever. And there's been a major improvement to the vertex connector system since playa-time last year.

Connectors fresh off the cnc, ready for post-processing.

From now until Burning Man we will be periodically updating this Zonotopia blog as we proceed towards that dusty domain known as Black Rock City.

Thank you all for your support!

zome mani padme zome

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