Undulating "concrete blankets" form a series of mountain-like structures in this conceptual pavilion designed by The Los Angeles Design Group for the Coachella festival.
US studio The Los Angeles Design Group (The LADG) has released designs of the pavilion it proposed for the 2018 edition of the annual California music festival, which starts today.
The studio developed the concept for Goldenvoice, the company behind Coachella, but the project was not chosen to become part of the festival.
In the proposal, The LADG suggested creating structures cloaked with lumpy concrete roofs that draw on the shape of the mountains surrounding the site of Coachella, and the bundles of clothes worn by festival revelers.
"We were interested in people who wear blankets and ponchos as outfits to music festivals," The LADG told Dezeen. "It struck us that they are wearing a simple kind of house that they can sleep in – and on – but also re-fashioning their bodies to look more like the lumpy mountains around the Coachella Valley."
"If people can wear buildings and look like mountains, we wondered if buildings could get in on the act too," the studio continued. "Could huts wear blankets and look more like mountains? Or even more like the people around them?"
As with the studio's earlier Kid Gets out of the Picture installation, the pavilion's roofs would be prefabricated. A wooden waffle structure, built off-site, would form the undulating shape with the concrete poured on top, before being transported to the festival site.
Hidden underneath, a skeletal structure would be made from concrete blocks and posts made of glulam – a manufactured wood created by layering up multiple slices of wood and gluing them together.
"We studied the construction process in detail and had found a way to pre-fabricate the concrete blankets and assemble them onsite in huge sections hoisted on cranes," said the studio.
As the roof lifts up at the sides it would create a number of ways to enter the pavilion that the visitors would have to "amble" through. Other elements, like tubes for revelers to clamber, would also be arranged underneath.
The LADG created five iterations of the pavilions – simplifying the design with each adaptation.
"What you'll see in the evolution of the work is that we began working with hundreds of objects at the scale of concrete block details, and ended working on just five or six objects stacking into a simple tower 50 feet tall," the studio explained.
Along with its line-up of music concerts Coachella, or the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, has become known for its art installations and sculptures, with previous projects including a sinuous orange and purple design built using a tonne of paper pulp and a set of neon mirrors.
Ahead of this year's event, which takes place 13-15 and 20-22 April 2018, American artist Phillip K Smith III described the impact of the music venue to Dezeen as enabling artwork enabled revelers to see art beyond typical exhibition spaces, and artists to reach a wider audience.