What is the Temple?

The Temple as a concept is an interesting one to try and portray to people who have not been immersed in it's presence before. When most people think of a "Temple" the idea we are trying to portray is almost definitely not the one that comes to mind.

The Temple we are making is in the style of David Best and the Burning Man festival. The tradition started in the year 2000 when during David's preparations to go to Burning Man a friend of his died in a vehicle accident. He ummed and ahhed over whether to go or not and in the end went. The structure he built there was made in his lost friends memory and then others took it on their own accord and write their own dedications to their lost love ones. By the end of the event the structure was covered in all sorts of dedications and then was burnt on the last night thus beginning the tradition. David Best returned the next year and made another Temple and did so up until 2007.

Over the years the Temple has taken on a life of it's own and is the scared heart of the Burning Man community. It is a place for people to write their deepest sorrows or greatest joys; to mourn their lost loved ones or to celebrate their love for life; a place for people to cry and a place for people to celebrate. All of these emotions are written all over the Temple walls in an ever growing communal dialogue that gains as as more and more people make use of the Temple. It is hard sometimes to not break into tears as you walk around the Temple and read it's walls. It becomes a beautiful and open communal expression of emotions.

On the last day of the festival, after most of the madness is over, the Temple burns as ten's of thousands of people watch in silence and carthatically release these emotions, it is an incredible experience to have.

The tradition of the Temple has been continued to this day at Burning Man, each year with a different crew, and at many of the regional events around the world, including Kiwiburn.

This is the Temple we are trying to create, a space for the Kiwiburn community to love, let go and move on with our lives. Join us in making this happen, we'd love to have you on board!

crew patches

ok so what do we think about colour?

nice find Ro.

this is very very cool.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/pallet-house.html

wood?

 ok, so we are going to need drift wood.

LOTS of wood

 road trip to walk on beaches?

hell no.

just look at satallite maps...

(oh, that would have been nice)

this is all near taranaki but other areas may be good too.

hear there are some good beaches near welly too!

waiongana stream - brixton

possible? trouble with finding road to beach unless we all get wet feet.

waitara river - waitara
massive loads of wood long sand beach

onaero river - onaero
easy access limited wood

urenui river - urenui - wow good one - pic
huge beach, lots of wood, really good access, like realy realy good access.

Mimi river
medium for wood spread out, no public access but open looking farm land.

next step is contact the right people in these areas to see if we can collect driftwood on their beaches?

ideas?

finished marquette

construction series

This is a quick marquette I made so I could get a feeling for what this would really look like in 3d. It also helped me get my head around how one would go about building it in the real world. Essentially one starts with a large well reinforced archway and then runs outwards from that building shorter and shorter arches. These would then be linked with a skin of lateral lengths of driftwood. As the wall is curving it is inherently quite rigid but I would not want to get too cocky about this until a larger drift wood marquette has been tried.

106 days...

hi there fellow participant, this is an open blog to show the design work we are doing on the next years temple.

Already I have been doing a lot of design work and feel we have a solid design. The product of many many conversations with my many wonderful (and tolerant) friends.

In my head at least it is already tangible thing, perhaps even a habitable place.

Really I just want to get suck in and build this baby!

BUT as we have another 108 days lets keep things fluid for now.

I'm not saying I want to through all that work away but Id like to open the process up and see if anyone else wants to contribute some other spark of creativity.

So lets pull it all apart and see how many different ways we can put this all back together!

(hopefully with no bolts left over)

First some research... 

you ever get that feeling someone else has already done all the best designs... 

well at least its out of copy right...

the nautilus shell was the shell which caught my attention with its beautifully symmetrical fractal form.

the "door" to a shell also intrigues me for several reasons. Firstly the shape seems to be constantly in motion, as if its falling into its self. Secondly the opening seems to allude to some pagan temple.

Such a intriguing mixture of sharp and soft, geometric and organic.

These spikes would also be ideal as embellishments on the major temple structure, particularly during the burn when they would add a level of complexity to the movement of the flames and smoke.

I would really like to continue this aesthetic out from the temple building too. Continuing the fractal spiral out into a maze punctuated with driftwood tree candles.

Lets hope we have plenty of hands because this is starting to become a bit of an epic project!

Ok, so thats the first sketch. simple but I think it would be a very interesting environment both outside and inside. particularly inside though!

starting to play now, this sketch was based on a double spiral. two curves reaching inside each other provides some more interesting architectural forms.

several people have said that they want the temple to extend out further blurring the boundary between itself and the landscape. to this end I have redrawn the above design but with a low wall extending outwards continuing the spiral of the central wall.

I really think we are onto something with this form. need to start making wire models of this to see what it really looks like in 3D. I will also do some trials with different shells too, they are all such interesting forms it will be hard to settle on any!