Faya Sanders 
Burning Man festival has shown a spiraling wooden pavilion as the main temple to be constructed and subsequently sent up in flames at the Nevada desert this year.
Called Galaxia, the temple will be formed of 20 wood trusses that spiral up and form a tower as they converge.
The triangular trusses will create different paths to the center of the pavilion, in which a giant 3D-printed mandala is going to be put. Little alcoves along the routes provide spaces for people to write and reflect.
The structure was designed with the help of digital 3D-modelling tools like Rhino and Grasshopper. It references the literary world Gaia in the 1980s sci-fi publication show Foundation by American author Isaac Asimov.
“Galaxia celebrates hope in the anonymous, planets, stars, black holes, the movement linking us in swirling galaxies of fantasies,” reads a blog post on the Burning Man site.
“A superior type of Gaia in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, Galaxia is your greatest network, the fabric of the world connecting living beings into one thing.”
French architect Mamou-Mani can be a lecturer at the University of Westminster, also has been taking classes of pupils to Burning Man for several years with co-tutor Toby Burgess.
Structures his pupils have built include the Tangential Dreams installation, one of those highlights of this 2016 edition.
Last year’s temple was created by artist Marisha Farnsworth and constructed out of 100 dead trees to highlight the “dramatic changes happening in our forests.”
It had been joined by an artificial tree lined with “light flocks” by Studio Drift and several more installations and artworks, some of which were captured architects and artists in presence.
