Playful and monumental, the works of art across Coachella 2025 are not standing still, literally or conceptually. As festivalgoers descend once more on Southern Caliornia‘s Colorado Desert, they’re greeted not only by sonic booms from the main stage but by a chorus of kinetic sculptures, light-blooming inflatables, and temporary works of architecture that sway, ripple, and all but vanish in the shifting sun.

This year’s installations, curated by Public Art Company (PAC) in collaboration with longtime Goldenvoice Art Director Paul Clemente, present a high-stakes pas de deux with the elements. In the words of PAC founder Raffi Lehrer, ‘This is an art program that asks us not just to look, but to inhabit, activate, and embrace the beautiful opera of the festival experience.’

Coachella 2025 | image © Lance Gerber

blooming inflatables to ephemeral clouds for coachella 2025

A standout art installation at Coachella 2025 is Taffy by Stephanie Lin, a mesmerizing work which continues to blur the line between sculpture and environment. Seven cylindrical towers cloaked in scalloped mesh flutter and ripple in the wind, creating flickering moiré patterns that appear and disappear with each gust. Painted in hues borrowed from midcentury desert modernism, the structures shimmer with the day’s changing light — monuments not of permanence, but of becoming. Beneath them, curved benches invite visitors to pause, reflect, and dissolve, just for a moment, into the mirage.

Meanwhile, Isabel + Helen Studio‘s Take Flight is inspired by the elegant impracticality of 19th-century flying machines, the installation features giant turbines that catch the desert wind and spin hypnotically, seemingly hovering between motion and stillness. Two skeletal bicycles roam the festival grounds, channeling the madcap ambition of human-powered aviation. By day, Take Flight reads as a mechanical relic lost in time; by night, it becomes a glowing, ghostly turbine—a reminder that sometimes the beauty lies not in success, but in the audacity of the attempt.

Le Grand Bouquet by Uchronia is a surreal garden of inflatable flowers that glow from within. Towering and translucent, these blossoms stretch skyward, their oversized petals providing shade and wonder. As the desert light shifts, the work transforms from radiant sculpture to floating mirage, toeing the line between reality and reverie. Beneath the flowers, festivalgoers can lounge in ephemeral springtime, gathered in pockets of soft nostalgia and shared spectacle.

Taffy, Stephanie Lin, Coachella, 2025 | image © Lance Gerber

art that invites touch, movement, and inhabitance

The art installations across the grounds at Coachella 2025 are assembled on-site. Since 2016, Clemente and a skilled in-house team of builders — carpenters, painters, riggers — have brought large-scale commissions to life from the ground up, embracing architectural scale and structural integrity without losing playfulness. From the curator‘s perspective, Lehrer’s vision draws from artists with ‘an intuitive understanding of scale and elevations’ who can evoke emotion through material, form, and color. Many of these collaborators come from architecture and design backgrounds, chosen as much for their technical fluency as for their spatial imagination.

The works do not shy away from interactivity. Many of the installations — architectural in ambition, sculptural in feel — invite touch, movement, and inhabitance. Some twist in the wind, some glow from within, others transform from day to night. What unites them is an attunement to Coachella’s extremes: blinding light and deep shadow, crowds and solitude, the monumental and the fleeting. Every piece is site-specific and tailored for the festival’s unique demands, often requiring up to three years of development in close collaboration with the curators.

Take Flight, Isabel + Helen Studio, Coachella, 2025 | image © Lance Gerber

The team notes that these installations face the same environmental trials as any desert structure — sun, wind, sand — but PAC is taking the challenge one step further with an evolving sustainability ethos. ‘We’re increasingly exploring modular and demountable strategies,’ says Lehrer, ‘so works can live on elsewhere.’ In some cases, like Francis Kéré’s Sarbalé ke, installations find new homes as permanent public art. When relocation isn’t possible, parts are repurposed, structural elements salvaged, and materials recycled — design decisions that begin not at teardown, but at first sketch.

The artworks might be up against sound systems, but they holds their own through scale and sensation. Lehrer describes the curatorial approach as mirroring the music festival’s genre-fluid spirit—pairing sculptors with architects, digital artists with experimental designers. It’s this multiplicity that gives the art program its vitality. Each piece becomes a punctuation mark in the sprawling sentence of Coachella’s landscape — an invitation to pause, reflect, and maybe even spin in the wind.

Uchronia, Le Grand Bouquet, Coachella, 2025 | image © Lance Gerber

Take Flight, Isabel + Helen Studio, Coachella, 2025 | image © Lance Gerber

Taffy, Stephanie Lin, Coachella, 2025 | image © Lance Gerber

Uchronia, Le Grand Bouquet, Coachella, 2025 | image © Lance Gerber

Coachella 2025 | image © Lance Gerber

project info:

event: Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Art Program

artists: Stephanie Lin, Isabel + Helen Studio, Uchronia

curation: Public Art Company (PAC)

dates: April 11th — 13th and 18th — 20th, 2025

photography: © Lance Gerber | @lance.gerber

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As the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival returns to California, the Empire Polo Field is once again transformed into a kaleidoscopic playground hosting an array of monumental installations. Curated by the Public Art Company, the showcase synergizes art, technology, and community with a dynamic interplay of light, color, form, and scale. The interactive artworks, with notable interventions by Morag Myerscough, HANNAH, and Nebbia, invite multi-dimensional reimaginings and explorations with vast architectural forms.

Myerscough brings a touch of whimsy to the expansive desert landscape with Dancing in the Sky. The immersive installation unfolds as a geometric plaza that sits in dialogue with its surrounding environment, beckoning festival-goers within through a series of gateways that invite exploration. Its kinetic elements gently dance in the sky, their abstract shapes overhead seemingly harmonized with the energy of the activity on the ground and the sun above.

all images by Lance Gerber

morag myerscough’s kaleidoscopic plaza sparks joy

Leaving an indelible mark on Coachella 2024’s festival landscape, the art installations invite curiosity, interaction, and rest under the desert sun while revealing experimental architectural forms and material explorations. Morag Myerscough’s Dancing in the Sky defines a 125-by-125–foot space within the festival grounds, enlivened by a series of structures of varying heights, some up to 60 feet, forming a skyline that captures the imagination and draws the eye to the beauty of the desert sky.

Through bold yet familiar colors and dynamic shapes, it invites exploration and sparks collective joy, inviting festival-goers to step inside and uncover its colorful labyrinth. The artist best known for her brilliant, patterned environments here emphasizes the natural beauty of the sky as part of the work, framing and illuminating the active space to create a fantastical, mesmerizing environment evoking an abstract fairytale. At night the installation transforms into an ethereal gathering space amid the darkness of the festival, its glowing aura and intricate thresholds fostering a communal sense of belonging.

monumental installations engulf festival-goers

‘Art has the power to transform spaces and minds alike,’ notes Raffi Lehrer, founder of Public Art Company and Curatorial Advisor for Coachella’s art program. ‘We aim to not only adorn the festival grounds but to create environments that provoke thought, evoke emotion, and encourage a shared experience among all attendees. Our collaboration with these incredible artists brings a fresh perspective to what art at a music festival can be.’

Elsewhere at the Coachella Festival, HANNAH presents a series of soaring sculptures that merge 3D printing with traditional craftsmanship for Monarchs: A House in Six Parts. A cluster of towers accompanied by smaller furniture objects rise up to 22 meters high to create a distinct gathering space amid the bustle of the festival. Pushing the boundaries of architectural design, the studio creates the nature-inspired installation’s intricate forms by merging 3D printed concrete and digitally fabricated wood. Likewise exploring materiality, Babylon by Nebbia offers a fusion of ancient and futuristic architectural forms giving rise to a monumental structure that serves as both a visual landmark and a sanctuary of shade and light. The architects have employed a stacked assembly of monolithic blocks to create an inhabitable, cathedral-like interior void, projection mapped along the surface to create a 360, multifaceted environment.

project info:

name: Dancing in the Sky

artist: Morag Myerscough

event: Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Art Program
dates: April 12-14 and April 19-21, 2024

The post morag myerscough’s kinetic installation enlivens coachella desert with a kaleidoscopic plaza appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

As Coachella 2023 kicked off to welcome music-lovers amid impressive stages and monumental art installations, Roger Wilson envisions a future festival marked with colossal pavilions, colorful canopies, and whimsical art pieces. Using AI design tool Midjourney, the designer draws on the vibrant and playful spirit of Coachella to inspire wonder and delight among festival-goers. A series of eccentric designs, each crafted from a different material, uplifts the desert landscape and creates a dynamic space. From giant colorful play castles to insitu 3D-printed crochet stages, these structures create a sense of enchantment as they add an element of fun and excitement to enhance the festival experience.

Imagining Future Coachella | all images courtesy of Roger Wilson

roger wilson inflates eccentric pavilions and stages

A core structure is a series of 3D-printed crochet towers, each of which is enlivened by a different combination of vibrant colors and patterns. Roger Wilson imagines giant mechanical spiders to print and knit the structures, conceiving their canopies to create a sense of movement and energy as festival-goers wander between them and enjoy their shade. Among them, raised rest cocoon pods will offer guests the opportunity to take a break and rest in the cool breeze. The designer also proposes a Peace Pavilion which serves as a beacon and a focal meeting point. The structure has been assembled from colorful scraps of plastic, waste, and old artificial flowers that have been stitched together, inviting guests to marvel at their from from afar or step inside to explore their intricate designs up close.

Elsewhere, an array of inflatable noodles tower over the festival in sweeping arches, housing within them various DJs and pockets for the audience. Illuminated from within at night, they cast a colorful flow across the festival grounds, and in the day are a celebration of vibrancy, sparking the imagination of all those that come across them. The various scaled canopies are stitched together from fabric offcuts, and form vertical art installations under which vendors can also find shelter to sell their products and various delectable foods.

giant inflatables sway gently in the breeze

the ‘Color Cathedral’ inflatable stage

DJs play music amid the giant noodles

The Peace Pavilion, crafted from recycled artificial flowers and scrap materials

aerial views over the fun and games zone

3D-printed structures with raised platforms for a moment of privacy and rest

waste fabrics form a shelter for vendors to sell their products

a knitted chill-out zone filled with giant bean bags and cushions

project info:

name: Imagining Future Coachellas
designer: Roger Wilson

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: ravail khan | designboom

The post roger wilson imagines inflatable monuments and whimsical canopies enlivening coachella appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

On April 14-16 and April 21-23, 2023, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival opened its doors, offering visitors an opportunity to explore a world of colorful and dynamic art installations. This year’s art program features four new artists including Kumkum Fernando, as well as Paris-based artist Vincent Leroy, whose reflective sculptures are designed to engage with visitors and transform their perception of the surrounding environment.

Leroy’s ‘Molecular Cloud’ depicts a cluster of peculiar clouds in the form of light, glossy inflatable objects floating above the expansive green field of the festival. The fluid and gradual transformation of the artwork creates unusual and organic shapes that reflect the surrounding lively atmosphere. ‘From a distance, the installation resembles giant pink clouds floating in the air, and from up close, you can see the festival, the sky and people reflected in the colorful spheres,’ explains the French artist. ‘The augmented reality experience, developed in collaboration with the Coachella team, enhances the dreamlike dimension and the idea of dialogue between reality and fiction,’ he adds. To learn more about ‘Molecular Cloud’ and the way it interacts with the environment and people, read the full interview below.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Vincent Leroy, Molecular Cloud, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Interview with Vincent Leroy

designboom (DB): Over the years, you have created a variety of works, from magnifying glass curtains and floating bubbles to revolving meteor-like sculptures. Is your 2023 Coachella installation a continuation of a previous project or will it be something entirely new?

Vincent Leroy (VL): My work is often based on movement and ‘Molecular Cloud’ is a continuation of research and a subsequent project, ‘Molecules,’ imagined in 2022. Inspired by the scientific universe and molecular structures, the idea for this series was to use movement to transform combinations of simple geometric shapes – spheres – into organic and more complex shapes. For the Coachella art program, the same module is repeated seven times, and the whole thing forms the appearance of a moving cloud floating above people’s heads.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Vincent Leroy, Molecular Cloud, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

DB: Your pieces almost always play with reflection and distortion. What do these concepts mean to you, and will they also be central to your Coachella installation?

VL: Yes, it’s true that I like to play with the phenomena of perception and make my installations interact with the public while dialoguing with its surroundings. In a world that is becoming more and more dematerialized, we may neglect or no longer pay attention to the world around us. I want my works to be part of the real world and at the same time offer a different perspective by adding a poetic or dreamlike dimension.

This will also be the case with Coachella’s Molecular Cloud. From a distance, the installation resembles giant pink clouds floating in the air and from close up you can see the festival, the sky, and the people reflected in the colorful spheres. Furthermore, the augmented reality experience, developed in collaboration with the Coachella team, enhances the dreamlike dimension and the idea of dialogue between reality and fiction.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Vincent Leroy, Molecular Cloud, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

DB: ‘Vincent Leroy, who often journeys to the overlooked and sometimes uninhabitable corners of the world to display his ethereal works,’ Coachella mentions. What is it that draws you to these obscure landscapes? How does your latest installation interact with the arid desert site of the festival?

VL: Discovering new landscapes is always a great source of inspiration for me and this is particularly the case with deserts. We are so saturated with information and images in our everyday life that it is sometimes overwhelming. When I find myself in the desert or in virgin landscapes, it’s the opposite. I feel a sense of freedom as if in front of a blank page, where everything becomes possible.

In the case of Coachella, I also had the festive side of the event in mind, along with the light and the incredible colors of the Californian sky. This is one of the reasons why the installation is pink, I wanted a sunny, lively, and festive color.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Vincent Leroy, Molecular Cloud, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

DB: Your installations ‘prompt contemplation and meditation, touching the body, and releasing emotions.’ How do your works achieve this deep connection with the viewer? How do you hope the Coachella visitors will interact with your work?

VL: It is often through movement that my works touch the public. On the one hand, because movement always calls out – it arouses curiosity and surprises, but also because it has a universal dimension, in the way that movement is life. I use deliberately slowed down, fluid and continuous movements in order to create a hypnotic effect and to plunge the spectators into another temporality, detached from reality and more contemplative. I don’t really have a preconceived idea of how I’d like Coachella visitors to interact with Molecular Cloud, I just hope they enjoy it! 

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Vincent Leroy, Molecular Cloud, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

project info: 

name: Molecular Cloud
artist: Vincent Leroy | @vincent_leroy_studio
event: Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 | @coachella

The post interview: vincent leroy’s reflective molecular cloud hovers above festival-goers at coachella appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

The 2023 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has opened its doors to immerse visitors in a world of vibrant art installations. Among the four new designers joining this year’s art program is Kumkum Fernando, a Sri Lankan-born artist known for his colorful sculptures of gods and robots. Fernando’s newly commissioned works were created specifically for the California festival to add a touch of Hindu mythology and retro-futurism to the iconic Coachella landscape.

‘The fusion of Asian cultural elements with futuristic designs in my sculptures is a natural expression of my artistic vision. I am not attempting to impose any particular meaning or message onto my work, but rather to explore the possibilities of combining different elements to create something entirely new and unique,’ Kumkum Fernando tells designboom. Dressed in bright tones and playful patterns, the otherworldly totemic creatures are titled ‘The Messengers’ and deliver their own message to each passerby. ‘I anticipate that (visitors) will experience the artwork in their own unique way. Some may be drawn to the intricate details and vibrant colors, while others may be captivated by the underlying themes and cultural references.’ the artist explains. To learn more about Fernando’s giant robot god sculptures, his sources of inspiration, and his artistic process, read the full interview below.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

interview with kumkum fernando

designboom (DB): Can you tell us a little about your installation for Coachella 2023? 

Kumkum Fernando (KF): My installations at the festival draw a parallel resemblance to my previous sculptures of gods and robots. These new works are by far the biggest I have ever dreamt of making. The festival will showcase figurines, which I have created solely for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The inspiration for these works comes from a combination of South Asian art/architecture, Hindu mythology, personal memories, as well as imagery of retro-futurism.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

DB: You are known to transform found objects/ motifs into artworks. Can you tell us a little about your artistic process? How do you incorporate your background into your work?

KF: My artistic process mainly involves repurposing old motifs, stories and designs into futuristic/ surreal forms, giving them a new life. As part of this process, I collect and document the shapes and motifs that capture my imagination. As I arrange shapes and patterns in specific ways, a face often emerges, serving as the foundation of my creative process. Each of my works begins with this as the starting point and gradually evolves as the design process unfolds, eventually taking the form of a complete being. Growing up, I was steeped in the rich cultural traditions of Sri Lanka, where I was exposed to ancient folk tales, myths of flying machines, and stories of divine and demonic beings from other realms. These childhood experiences along with my personal stories continue to inform and inspire my creative process, as I draw upon these narratives to shape and give meaning to my art.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

DB: In your work, one finds a series of futuristic robot-like sculptures that are influenced by the colors, shapes and ornaments of Sri Lankan and other Asian Cultures. Is this a conscious attempt to combine the past and the future?

KF: My intention is not to force a connection between the past and the future, but rather to create a new world where they can coexist. The fusion of Asian cultural elements with futuristic designs in my sculptures is a natural expression of my artistic vision. I am not attempting to impose any particular meaning or message onto my work, but rather to explore the possibilities of combining different elements to create something entirely new and unique.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

DB: Many of your works are presented together with your poems. What does poetry mean to you? Will the Coachella piece be accompanied by a poem, too?

KF: My writings for the characters I make are more like a window into a moment of their lives. The words together with the sculpture hope to capture the feeling that I am trying to create for the world the characters live in.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

DB: What do you hope your new installation will bring to this year’s Coachella? How do you expect visitors to interact with it / what do you think they will take away from it?

KF: The stories behind some of the artworks that will be showcased this year are very personal to me.

As for how visitors will interact with the installation, I anticipate that they will experience the artwork in their own unique way. Some may be drawn to the intricate details and vibrant colors, while others may be captivated by the underlying themes and cultural references. I hope that due to the immense scale of these works, the audience experiences a sense of awe and feels transported to a world where these characters exist in their midst.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

project info: 

name: The Messengers
artist: Kumkum Fernando | @kumkumfernando
event: Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 | @coachella 

The post interview: kumkum fernando releases swarm of gigantic robot gods at coachella 2023 appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

On April 14-16 and April 21-23, 2023, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Art Program returns with new, large-scale immersive works from renowned local and international artists and designers. Through light and color, the installations will invite playful reimaginings and explorations in multiple dimensions, create new spaces for connection and community, and add new, multi-sensory dimensions to the festival’s music performances.

Spanning the entirety of Empire Polo Field, the newly commissioned works include sculptural pieces by creatives across the globe: Kumkum Fernando, Vincent Leroy, Güvenç Özel, and Maggie West. Their works will act as fresh, colorful, and architectural beacons to attract, inspire, nourish and guide festival-goers, offering them a sense of joy freedom, and calm. 

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

‘Surprise encounters with these outsized projects in the middle of the valley, surrounded by music and the collective energy of the crowd has become a much-anticipated shared experience at the Festival, and some of the works have been woven into the archetypal imagery of Coachella,’ mentions Paul Clemente, who manages the art program for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. ‘The arts program has evolved significantly since inception and the participants, who come from around the world and from Southern California are well-respected in their fields, presenting extraordinary and thoughtful works in a setting where they can inspire, inform, and invite direct engagement with art and current social and cultural themes and ideas. It is a unique aspect of this Festival, and we really endeavor to carry that spark into the community with adjacent school programs and our on-site Coachella Arts Studios.’

‘In selecting projects from around the world, our intention is to bring together artists, architects and designers whose practices invite participation, inclusion, and transformation. We strive to create a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural program that reflects our audience and the many performing artists that grace the stages of the festival. The resulting works will become icons — part of the identity of this year’s show. These installations act simultaneously as
way-finding markers, points of congregation, and most importantly, accessible entry points for all show-goers to experience art.’ adds Curatorial Advisor Raffi Lehrer. 

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Güvenç Özel, Holoflux, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Kumkum Fernando merges design and sri lankan heritage

Kumkum Fernando transforms found objects into works of art informed by Sri Lanka’s millennia-old culture. From ornate temple paintings to folktales and the vast underworld with its gods, giants, and demons, Fernando draws inspiration from this heritage. The Sri Lankan-born artist combines design with a deep appreciation for ancient and traditional forms, even combining his works with poetry he has written himself.

‘My installations at the festival draw a parallel resemblance to my previous sculptures of gods and robots. These new works are by far the biggest I have ever dreamt of making. The festival will showcase figurines, which I have created solely for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The inspiration for these works comes from a combination of South Asian art/architecture, Hindu mythology, personal memories, as well as imagery of retro-futurism.’ Fernando shares with designboom. ‘My intention is not to force a connection between the past and the future, but rather to create a new world where they can coexist. The fusion of Asian cultural elements with futuristic designs in my sculptures is a natural expression of my artistic vision. I am not attempting to impose any particular meaning or message onto my work, but rather to explore the possibilities of combining different elements to create something entirely new and unique.’

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Vincent Leroy plays with reflections and superimpositions

Vincent Leroy, who often travels to the most remote and sometimes uninhabited corners of the world to exhibit his ethereal artwork, has created a special installation for the Coachella desert landscape. Through his work, the French artist questions our perception of real and imagined spaces in the context of our increasingly digitalized world. Through the manipulation of waves, reflections, and superimpositions that open up new dimensions, his installations inspire contemplation and meditation, touching the body and releasing emotions.

‘My work is often based on movement and Molecular Cloud is a continuation of research and a subsequent project, Molecules, imagined in 2022. Inspired by the scientific universe and molecular structures, the idea for this series was to use movement to transform combinations of simple geometric shapes – spheres – into organic and more complex shapes. For the Coachella art program, the same module is repeated seven times, and the whole thing forms the appearance of a moving cloud floating above people’s heads.’ Leroy tells designboom. ‘I like my works to be part of the real world, while providing another perspective by adding a poetic or dreamlike dimension. This will also be the case for Coachella’s Molecular Cloud. From a distance, the installation evokes giant pink clouds floating in the air and from close up you can see the festival, the sky and the people reflected in the colored spheres. Furthermore, the augmented reality experience developed around the work with the Coachella team reinforces its dreamlike dimension and the idea of dialogue between reality and fiction.’

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Vincent Leroy, Molecular Cloud, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Vincent Leroy, Molecular Cloud, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Güvenç Özel introduces us to artificial intelligence

Cyber-Physical architect, artist, and critical technologist Güvenç Özel is an interdisciplinary innovator and internationally recognized pioneer of augmented reality, interactive robotics and machine learning in architecture. With a curatorial intervention at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Turkish creative introduced the world to architectural and artistic applications of augmented reality and explored how contemporary technologies and media shape the socio-political and aesthetic landscape of digital culture and the built environment.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 view of installations left to right_ Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers; Güvenç Özel, Holoflux, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Güvenç Özel, Holoflux, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Maggie West brings bold superbloom to coachella

Maggie West is known for her colorful photo and video installations of plants and flowers that push the boundaries of traditional time-lapse photography and sit at the intersection of documentation and fantasy. The Los Angeles-based artist’s large-scale, photography-centered sculptural installations have become a significant part of the Los Angeles cultural landscape. Her work for this year’s festival, which promises to add a bold superbloom to the festival’s desert landscape, will be one of the world’s largest three-dimensional color photography installations.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Maggie West, Eden, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Maggie West, Eden, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

spectra installation returns for its fourth year

Robert Bose, the New York artist behind the quarter-mile-long kinetic Balloon Chain, DoLaB, the Los Angeles-based creative team that transforms venues into fantastical and interactive experiences inspired by human connection, authenticity and environmental sustainability; and Don Kennell, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based artist whose monumental animal sculptures connect audiences through explorations of nature and community, return with NEWSUBSTANCE, a British art and design studio that creates performative, site-specific and temporary works around the world. Their stunning, seven-story, architecturally inspired pavilion, Spectra, returns to the festival for the fourth year, inviting visitors to journey through its spiraling, colorful design to experience a new perspective on the world around them.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 view of installations left to right_ NEWSUBSTANCE, Spectra; Güvenç Özel, Holoflux, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 installation view of Güvenç Özel, Holoflux, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

Coachella Art Studios provides safe space for self-expression

Committed to art, culture and empowerment and led by Coachella Valley-based multidisciplinary artist, educator and executive director Marnie L. Navarro, Raices Cultura, a grassroots arts and culture nonprofit organization located in the city of Coachella, will again recruit and mentor 20 youth who live in the East Valley cities of Coachella, Indio, Mecca, Thermal, and La Quinta to form an artist cohort and build an art installation for the festival campground based on their shared approach to theme and aesthetics. The women-led Coachella Art Studios will provide a safe, immersive, and inclusive space for Festival-goers to explore their creativity and express themselves.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 view of installations left to right_ Kumkum Fernando, The Messengers; Güvenç Özel, Holoflux, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Coachella

project info: 

event: Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Art Program
dates: April 14-16 and April 21-23, 2023

The post coachella 2023 art installations immerse visitors in a world of vibrant architectural beacons appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

From March 4 to May 7, 2023, Desert X, a biennial outdoor art exhibit spread across California’s Coachella Valley, will decorate the desert landscape with a series of sculptural works and site-specific installations. Created by multiple artists from diverse backgrounds, the installations draw on a range of concepts, including childhood dreams, science fiction characters, conspiracy theorists, and cowboy culture, to present a sculptural spectacle that opens up new ways of looking at the arid setting. The collection of works includes a sculpture made of ‘sleeping’ containers, an old car taken over by otherworldly creatures, clusters of silver balloons flying in the sky, as well as a giant board game base embedded in a desert field.

No.1225 Chainlink by Rana Begum

Influenced by minimalism and childhood experiences, British-Bangladeshi artist Rana Begum presents a site-specific installation titled ‘No.1225 Chainlink.’ The work, which blurs boundaries between sculpture, design, and architecture, responds to the ubiquitous chain-link fence that forms a pattern across the Coachella Valley, using a material meant to protect but also associated with violence. The result is a bright yellow, cloud-like pavilion that interacts with light, air, sand, and water, offering ‘paths of expansive escape rather than reductive confinement’. The installation constantly changes with the movement of the sun and the visitors within, emphasizing that nothing in life is static – everything, from the outside world to our feelings within, is in a constant state of flux.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Rana Begum, No.1225 Chainlink | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Rana Begum, No.1225 Chainlink | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart by Lauren Bon

Los Angeles-based environmental artist Lauren Bon and her practice Metabolic Studio unveil ‘The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart.’ The poetic installation features a lace-like steel sculpture of a to-scale blue whale heart, submerged in a small pool pumped full of Salton Sea water. Instead of serving as a harbinger death, the sculpture metabolizes and generates energy and clean water that it releases back into the atmosphere, strengthening the potential for future life over the duration of the exhibition while visually transforming itself in the process. The work, which combines swimming pools with water and fish-bone skeletal ‘sand’ in a landscape associated with tremendous water scarcity, reminds us not only of the need for artists to create on the same level as society’s ability to destroy, but also of our own connection to water and that the desert was once a sea.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Lauren Bon, The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Lauren Bon, The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Amar a Dios en Tierra de Indios, Es Oficio Maternal by Paloma Contreras Lomas

Mexico City-based artist Paloma Contreras Lomas, known for her exploration of themes such as patriarchy, violence, class segregation, colonial guilt and constructed middle, presents ‘Amar a Dios en Tierra de Indios, Es Oficio Maternal.’ The sculpture presents itself as an aging car that has come to a stop in Sunnylands, while an absurd array of entwined limbs of two mysterious figures in long hats sprawl out of the car and onto the pristine, manicured grounds of the site. Plush, long hands armed with padded rifles hang out of the windows, barely camouflaged by the artificial undergrowth that overgrows the sculpture. These strange characters accompany the visitor on a caricature of a western-meets-scifi audiovisual tour of the landscape, like a fictional tour of a seemingly familiar world outside, guided by aliens and ghosts.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Amar a Dios en Tierra de Indios, Es Oficio Maternal | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Amar a Dios en Tierra de Indios, Es Oficio Maternal | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy the artist and Desert X

Immersion by Gerald Clarke 

Artist, university professor, cowboy, and Cahuilla tribal leader Gerald Clarke understands the role that games can play in helping people gain knowledge they might not seek on their own. Using the language of traditional Cahuilla basketry and American board games, the artist creates a monumental sculpture of a game board in the desert that immerses visitors in the natural and cultural history of Native Americans in the Coachella Valley. The maze-like structure invites visitors to traverse it and move according to the instructions of a deck of cards, rewarding the player with new perspectives and a new understanding of the landscape.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Gerald Clarke, Immersion | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Gerald Clarke, Immersion | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Liquid A Place by Torkwase Dyson

‘Liquid A Place’ is part of an ongoing series that starts from the premise that we are the water in space, inviting viewers to consider their physical connection to the rivers and oceans that surround us. This notion is based on the fact that about 60 percent of our bodies and 70 percent of the planet are made up of water, and this water circulates throughout our bodies and the planet as it changes state from solid to liquid to gas. For this iteration of Liquid A Place, Dyson creates a monumental sculpture that is a poetic meditation that combines the memory of water in the body and the memory of water in the desert.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Torkwase Dyson, Liquid A Place | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Torkwase Dyson, Liquid A Place | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Searching For The Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium) By Mario García Torres

Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium) is a reflection on the ‘cowboy culture that exists on both the Mexican and American borders and represents a macho, high-handed, and forceful domination of nature. These characteristics also relate to the history of art, particularly in the American West. The installation touches on the idea that in cowboy culture, as well as in land art, there is a promise to dominate nature that comes with a pronounced risk of failure. In his installation for Desert X, the artist recreates a bull-riding scene, replacing the bull component with a flat, geometric, reflective surface slowing down the machine’s movement to gradually reveal what this object really is.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Mario García Torres, Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium) | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Mario García Torres, Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium) | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Namak Nazar by HYLOZOIC/DESIRES

Hylozoic/Desires, or h/d, uses metaphors from outer space and the natural environment to create an imaginary cosmology of interference, entanglements deep voids, debris, delays, alienation, distance, and intimacy. In Desert X, they find this metaphor in salt. Inspired by the proliferation of conspiracies-UFOlogists, Scientologists, cybernetic spiritualists, Area 51, Apartment-Earthers, Lizardmen, and chemtrails-H/D has created a wooden column that branches into speakers spewing an imaginary conspiracy theory about Namak Nazar, a salt particle that evokes the demise of climate change and offers redemption by looking inward. The particle seems to rise and crystallize above the trunk of the post, creating a connection between the salt heard in the stories from the loudspeaker and the physical desert landscape, where salt lines predict future droughts and floods and salt songs describe the sacred geometry of the desert before settler colonialism.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Hylozoic/Desires, Namak Nazar | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Hylozoic/Desires, Namak Nazar | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Sleeping Figure by Matt Johnson

Matt Johnson is known for his ironic combinations of everyday subjects with raw physical matter. His sculptures explore the paradox of visual forms through unorthodox and surprising materials. The sculpture presented at Desert X 2023, Sleeping Figure, could be a cubist rendition of a classical odalisque, except that the cubes are shipping containers belonging to the globalized movement of goods and trade. Created at the time a Japanese-owned, Taiwanese-operated, German-managed, Panamanian-flagged, and Indian-manned container giant was under Egyptian jurisdiction for six days while blockading the Suez Canal, Johnson’s work speaks to the fault lines and fractures of a supply chain economy in distress. Located on the main artery connecting the Port of Los Angeles to the inland United States, the sculpture takes on local significance with the recent approval of distribution centers north of Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs. Casually and laconically, it overlooks the landscape, reminding us that the invisible hand of globalization, now joined to its container body, has come to rest in the Coachella Valley.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Matt Johnson, Sleeping Figure | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Matt Johnson, Sleeping Figure | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Originals by Tyre D. Nichols

Born and raised in Sacramento, California, Tyre Nichols photographed landscapes, sunsets, monuments, and the architecture of his adopted town of Memphis, Tennessee. The works serve as the unobtrusive documents of a young man whose gaze is focused on the moments of beauty and transience that shape the rituals of daily life.

Now celebrated as part of Desert X, Originals by Tyre Nichols, who was killed due to police brutality, this work represents not only a vision that has been brutally denied the opportunity to flourish, but the potential of all those people whose lives have been lost to the state-sanctioned violence of institutional racism. On billboards along the GeneAutry Trail, Nichols’ work also reminds us that so many of these needless deaths occur on the side of the road. Here, the quiet beauty of these floating images stands in stark contrast to the terror Nichols and so many others experience on the shoulder. But as with the vision, the message is also one of hope: hope that by limiting pretext checks, California can lead the way in police reform; hope that together we can create a just society where the fragile and beautiful talents of people like Tyre Nichols can thrive and grow.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Tyre Nichols, Originals, GoFundMe Tyre Nichols Memorial Fund | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Tyre Nichols, Originals, GoFundMe Tyre Nichols Memorial Fund | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X

Pioneer by Tschabalala Self

Pioneer is a monument erected as a tribute to the collective ancestral mothers of what is now America. Standing in the California desert, Pioneer is a figure that simultaneously emerged from the historical event of America’s founding and has an ephemeral quality that is not tied to a specific point in time. The desert often refers to both the beginning and the end. Pioneer similarly represents the lost, displaced, and forgotten indigenous, Native American, and African women whose bodies and labor made American expansion and growth possible while providing a beacon of resilience for their descendants-a visual representation of their birthright and place in the American landscape. The sculpture celebrates the flexibility of the divine feminine spirit and form, as well as fluid identity in contemporary America. She reminds us that even in the desert, we are born of water.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Tschabalala Self, Pioneer | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 installation view, Tschabalala Self, Pioneer | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Chimera by Héctor Zamora

Héctor Zamora’s Chimera is a performative action in collaboration with street vendors, who are ubiquitous in the Coachella Valley but often invisible in the landscape. The artist’s work offers people the opportunity to use materials differently and break rules to open up new possibilities for expression and individuality. In this case, he transforms street vendors into walking sculptures made of balloons that dissolve as visitors buy the balloons and take them home, interacting with the vendors in a space of dignity.

Desert X 2023 performance view, Héctor Zamora, Chimera | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 performance view, Héctor Zamora, Chimera | photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Khudi Bari by Marina Tabassum

On the occasion of the Desert X 2023 exhibition, Dhaka-based architect Marina Tabassum has created a film titled Khudi Bari (Bengali for ‘tiny house’), which focuses on an example of a modular mobile home that is cost-effective, durable, and relatively quick and easy to assemble and disassemble with minimal labor. The house takes advantage of a rigid frame structure and can help save goods and lives during flash floods on tiny ‘desert islands’ of sand called ‘chars’ that threaten the Bengal Delta. In the floodplains of Bangladesh, the land is fluid, and these islands often break off and erode into the water, forcing people to move their homes. Khudi Bari reminds us to draw on locally rooted knowledge to find innovative solutions to an uncertain future. The film was commissioned by Desert X, which invited Tabassum to explore dry and wet cultures and the role of design in enabling life in some of the world’s most extreme climates.

Desert X 2023 film still from Marina Tabassum, Khudi Bari, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X 2023 film still from Marina Tabassum, Khudi Bari, courtesy of the artist and Desert X

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At this weekend’s opening of Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, eleven installations transformed the vast desert site into a playful new landscape. With the colossal pieces ranging from of sculpture to architecture, one work creates a colorful space of leisure and play — ‘The Playground’ was designed by the team at Architensions to merge the urban piazza with the vibrancy of Southern California. 

The design and research office is led by Alessandro Orsini and Nick Roseboro, whose studio is headquartered between Brooklyn and Rome.

image © Julian Bajsel | @jbajsel

the modular towers by architensions

With the Playground, Architensions (see more here) brings urbanity to the desertous Coachella Valley with a colorful gesture. The studio creates a vertical city fragment, responding to the single-story suburban sprawl throughout the surrounding context. 

The design of the installation is informed by the history of leisure, which the team investigated in depth. along with the broader human interaction with architecture. organized into a modular grid framework, the project takes shape as a grouping of four steel-framed towers, ranging from 42 to 56 feet in height and linked by sky-bridges.

image © michael vahrenwald / ESTO

reflecting the colors of coachella

At Coachella (see more here), Architensions builds each of The Playground’s four towers as a stack of geometric shapes. These block modules are playful and unique in their form and color, and are finished in a dichroic film in either cyan, magenta, or yellow. The bold hues bathe the surrounding area in color as the sun shines through them. Meanwhile, other modules are finished in a mirrored surface to festival-goers to interact with them. At night, these mirrored blocks glow with the light of the surrounding performances and activities of the event.

image © Lance Gerber | @lance.gerber

a piazza for play in the desert

The design of Architensions’ The Playground creates an urban piazza for the Coachella Valley. This 174-by-104-foot public square marks the intersection of the four towers and introduces a semi-enclosed space where visitors can rest. Magenta and yellow are employed along the vertical grid while the piazza is demarcated in cyan. 

The installation is designed with influence from Constant Nieuwenhuys’s New Babylon, a city of ‘improvisation, chances, and play as a critical alternative to the burdens imposed by production.’ The assemblage references urban spaces of leisure including piazzas, theaters, and arcades — all organized into a vertical grid, an orderly new urban landscape. 

Orsini elaborates: ‘In an analogy with Aldo Rossi’s ‘Il teatro del Mondo,’ The Playground creates an environment similar to a theater, in which people can interact in a sort of performance. It provides an opportunity to experience a leisure space without the use of technology, simply by interacting with the space and its materiality. The user is at the same time a spectator and performer.’

image © michael vahrenwald / ESTO

image © Lance Gerber

image © Lance Gerber

image © Lance Gerber

image © michael vahrenwald / ESTO

project info:

project title: The Playground

architecture: Architensions | @architensions

location: Coachella Valley Music & Art Festival | @coachella

completion: April 2022

photography: Lance Gerber | @lance.gerber, Julian Bajsel | @jbajsel

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‘H.i.P.O. – hazardus interstellar perfessional operations’ by dedo vabo
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella (also main image)

for two weekends in april 2019 — 12–14 and 19–21 — the empire polo club welcomes the coachella valley music and arts festival. as part of the event, an international program of artist installations creates a ‘pop-up city’ of landmarks that helps attendees navigate the festival. dedo vabo, a studio that ‘confuses, confounds and captivates’, returns to coachella, determined to launch a rocket titled ‘​H.i.P.O. – hazardus interstellar perfessional’. standing seventy-five feet tall, the rocket sits atop an advanced laboratory and mission control center filled with animatronics and interactive special effects.

‘spectra’ by NEWSUBSTANCE
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

NEWSUBSTANCE’s seven-story spectrum of color that went viral at last year’s event returns, embodying the festival’s sunrise and sunset. the immersive installation — which will remain in place for at least the next three years as the first resident art piece at the festival, allows concertgoers to ascend its inner spiral to a 360-degree observation deck offering breathtaking views of the awe-inspiring desert. 

‘spectra’ by NEWSUBSTANCE

‘it was the color shift element that originally drew coachella’s organizers,’ says creative director patrick o’mahony. ‘the title SPECTRA refers to how people move through the color spectrum on each floor; they walk around and see the whole site and the viewing deck at the top shift through different perspectives. it takes down the sound of the festival a few notches and provides a space for reflection.’

‘colossal cacti’ by office kovacs
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

los angeles-based creative studio office kovacs’ ‘​colossal cacti’ ​consists of seven brightly colored cacti, the four largest of which range between 36 and 52 feet high, while the smaller three stand less than 24 feet tall. the grouping sprawls like a skyline, casting long shadows and creating a fun, attractive, and shaded gathering space. the platforms on which the cacti stand each have large steps lined with paint that reference frank stella’s ‘multicolored squares.’

‘overview effect’ by poetic kinetics
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

poetic kinetics’s larger-than-life astronaut — previously featured in 2014 — returns from a long adventure, looking beaten up and scarred and ready to share the evidence of its travels. ‘all over its body there is evidence, or clues, of the fantastical story of where it went,’ says patrick shearn, founder of poetic kinetics. while the astronaut — about 70 feet tall standing straight up and 45 feet tall in its usual crouched position — exudes different colors and aesthetic patterns than it did five years ago, but it functions in a similar fashion, navigating and hovering over concertgoers and projecting their faces and names on its helmet visor and space suit name tag, respectively. animatronics allow the astronaut to articulate lifelike gestures.

‘mismo’ by sofia enriquez
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

locally-based artist and fashion designer sofia enriquez goes three-dimensional with a garden of six massive paisleys — one of the motifs in the graphic vocabulary she uses on her canvases and murals, as well as her line of upcycled clothing that she sells under the label MUCHO.​ ‘everybody wears paisleys: guys, girls, young people and old people, and people of different cultures,’ says sofia enriquez.

‘mismo’ by sofia enriquez
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

‘it can be found on a cotton bandana worn by someone doing manual labor to someone wearing a business suit with a silk tie,’ enriquez continues. ‘it’s a symbol that makes the equality in people stand out,’ which is a theme that runs through all of the artist’s work. the paisleys, which are constructed with wood and range in height from 14 to 18 feet, read like double-sided paintings and are painted in bright, bold colors to contrast with the desert’s muted and pastel tones.

‘foiled plan’ by peggy noland
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

returning to the coachella art program for her third year, peggy noland has once again enveloped the sonora stage in a signature multimedia artwork. for the work’s execution, noland assembled a team of predominantly los angeles-based friends and colleagues to lend their technical expertise and able hands. ‘foiled plan’ sees noland and her team integrating large-scale painting, custom furniture, and enormous cactus sculptures into a unique visual experience that illustrates the artist’s on-going interest in themes of reflection.

‘foiled plan’ by peggy noland
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

the holographic material that covers the stage is a new tool in noland’s wheelhouse and its star role in the work exhibits her fresh experimentation with the material’s malleable physicality and color properties. noting that every inch of the stage has been carefully hand treated, noland hopes that festival goers and performers alike will internalize the immense amounts of love poured into the fabrication of this gem-like habitat.

‘sarbalé ke’ by francis kéré
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

francis kéré’s installation comprises 12 colorful towers that reference the baobab trees of his native west african village of gando, burkina faso. ‘in my culture, the baobab is the most important tree,’ explains kéré. ‘it’s giant, and it has multiple uses as food and medicine. it’s the place where you get together, celebrate, and discuss. it also attracts animals. it is spiritual. naturally you will walk toward it.’ read more about the project on designboom here.

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kéré’s installation comprises 12 colorful towers
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella (also main image)

the coachella valley music and arts festival, commonly referred to as coachella, has featured a diverse program of artist installations since its inception in 1999. the works, by artists from around the world, combine to create a ‘pop-up city’ that can be enjoyed by the festival’s temporary community. the installations act as landmarks to help map and navigate the field, serving as gathering points, as well as places for respite and shelter away from the desert heat.

the structures reference the baobab trees of burkina faso
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

francis kéré’s installation comprises 12 colorful towers that reference the baobab trees of his native west african village of gando, burkina faso. ‘in my culture, the baobab is the most important tree,’ explains kéré. ‘it’s giant, and it has multiple uses as food and medicine. it’s the place where you get together, celebrate, and discuss. it also attracts animals. it is spiritual. naturally you will walk toward it.’

the project is titled ‘sarbalé ke’, a phrase that translates as ‘house of celebration’
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

the project is titled ‘sarbalé ke’, a phrase that means ‘house of celebration’ in kéré’s native tongue. the structures, some of which are taller than 60 feet (18 meters), have been rendered in joyful colors, while their shadows provide valuable shaded spaces. light is another important component. ‘in my culture where there is no light, no electricity, if we see a light we watch it for a while,’ kéré continues. ‘if it stays illuminated we walk toward it, and there will be a celebration.’

some of the towers soar higher than 60 feet (18 meters)
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

coachella is celebrating its 20th anniversary
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

the ‘pop-up city’ can be enjoyed by the festival’s temporary community
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

shadows provide valuable shaded spaces
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

the structures have been rendered in joyful colors
image by lance gerber, courtesy of coachella

the layout of the 12 colorful towers
image courtesy of kéré architecture

project info:

title: sarbalé ke, ‘the house of celebration’
location: coachella, indio, USA
type of project: large scale art installation
size: 200 sqm (2,153 sqf)
design: september 2018 – december 2018 (beginning – end)
construction: january 2019 – april 2019 (beginning – end)
status: completed

architect: francis kéré — kéré architecture, berlin, germany
design team: johanna lehmann, kinan deeb, andrea zaia, andrea maretto — kéré architecture, berlin, germany
contributors: n’faly ismaël camara, olani ewunnet — kéré architecture, berlin, germany
project management: johanna lehmann (kéré architecture), raffi lehrer (goldenvoice)
client: goldenvoice, los angeles, california, united states
construction: goldenvoice, los angeles, california, united states
project management: raffi lehrer, associate art director, goldenvoice, los angeles
structural engineer: kyle morris

The post ​francis kéré’s coachella installation comprises 12 colorful towers appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.