With the arrival of Spring, thousands of people have made a trip to the California desert for this year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Apart from the showcase of its celebrities, the festival features some outstanding art and architecture installations this year.
One of the best installation was "Crown Ether," created by a community that explores the "relationship of the terrestrial to the sublime." The installation features cyclic compound molecules that cluster in the form of a ring, according to Arch Paper.
Created for Coachella by Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous, the sculptures are symbolic of people coming together around the music and the arts. Jeyifous' artworks are normally occupied by detailed renderings and narratives of people and the group of people living in a particular setting, which normally involves experimental public architecture.
Another remarkable Coachella design this year is "Lighthouse," made up of thousands of arrangedly-rounded mirrors at concurrent yet separated angles that create a tower from light-catching fragments. "It's a way to empirically present how the mind turns the continuous interconnectedness of phenomena into separate beings," Prado said, according to Arch Daily.
The art inception of Coachella this year aimed to "exhibit and celebrate the ethos of human connection," and implement "art as transformative experience, alongside environmental sustainability." To accomplish this, the Beacon pavilion used over 15 different software programs to create design elements.
This includes engineering calculation software, modeling software for sun studies, as well as video software for content design. A floating center column that supports 2000 pounds of structure, held in place mid-air using 21 cables, certainly made use of these tools in Coachella.
Although the event has been known as a showcase for some of the top-billed musicians, artists, designers and architects, its architecture this year has gained a considerable recognition from the crowd. Let's hope that the Coachella festival would embrace bolder concepts and architecture in the coming year.
